Nachet Opera Glasses: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

This is a small and light-weight instrument with an aluminum frame, and dark leather on the barrels. The center focus and eyecups are black, possibly celluloid. The objective lenses are 20 mm diameter. The length is 3.4 cm closed. The left eyecup is marked “NACHET / OPTICIEN.” The right one is marked “10 RUE DE LA PAIX / PARIS.” The cross brace at the objective end is marked “C. J. MYERS.”

Aluminum opera glasses could be had from high-end dealers by 1860. This example came to the Smithsonian in 1922, in the large bequest of Cassie Mason Myers Julian James. They probably belonged to her mother, Catalina Juliana Mason Myers (1824-1905), a wealthy woman who visited Paris in the 1860s.

The Nachet signature refers Camille Joseph Nachet (1839-1929), an optician who showed telemeters at international exhibition of 1889, and who received a patent for a stereo-chromoscope in 1894. His father Camille Sebastien Nachet, and his brother Jean Alfred Nachet, were famous microscope makers.

Materials, dates and provenance

• date made: 1850-1900
• Object Name: opera glasses
• Object Type: opera glasses
• Other Terms: opera glasses; Opticals; Accessories Carried; Female
• Physical Description: fabric (cord material)
• Physical Description: glass (objective lense material)
• Physical Description: leather (barrel material)
• Physical Description: metal (rims material)
• Physical Description: metal (bridge material)
• Physical Description: metal (frame material)
• Physical Description: glass (eyepiece material)
• ID Number: CS.033466
• catalog number: 033466
• accession number: 70138
• Credit Line: Estate of Cassie Mason Myers Julian-James
• Data Source: National Museum of American History

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of American History through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed.