What a spectacle! Drama at auction as Joyce’s famous glasses fetch €17k
NOW here is some eyebrowraising news!
The spectacles worn by James Joyce while he wrote his major work, Ulysses, have been sold for €17,000 to an Irish buyer – after some drama at the auction.
The iconic pince-nez glasses had been conservatively estimated to be worth up to €15,000. Bidding started at €6,000, with frantic telephone bidders vying for the muchsought-after glasses.
When the price reached €15,000, with two remaining bidders, a phone connection failed, resulting in the auction being stalled for several minutes until this bidder was reached again. However, this person ultimately lost out.
The glasses were auctioned by Fonsie Mealy Auctioneers at the Talbot Hotel in Stillorgan, Dublin.
They were in good condition, and came with a velvet-lined case from Dublin optician Yeates & Co. They also have a nose clip instead of earpieces, with gilt fittings and chain.
George Mealy, an auctioneer based in Castlecomer, Co. Kilkenny, said the glasses came from the collection of Joyce’s ‘close boyhood friend Thomas Pugh, of the famous glassmaking family’.
He said: ‘The glasses were being sold by the Pugh family and there had been significant interest from China especially, and also in Japan, Australia and the US.’
Mr Mealy said Joyce had trouble with his eyes from early adulthood, as did Thomas Pugh. He said the spectacles were gifted to Pugh on one of his visits to Joyce in Paris.
‘The glasses are a tangible link to Joyce and they give the world a vision of what Joyce was seeing while writing Ulysses,’ he said.
For years, even the most eminent biographers of Joyce believed he was severely shortsighted.
However, evidence that emerged in 2011 proved he, in fact, suffered from farsightedness. The new diagnosis was revealed in the British Medical Journal after closer inspection of his prescription glasses.
The Spanish and Dutch researchers said Joyce’s ‘failing eyesight was a constant liability in his life’.
The auction also saw the sale of two autographed letters sent by Joyce to Pugh, both dated 1934, thanking him for sending photos of Dublin and requesting he visit his home in Paris. One sold for €14,000, while the other went for €4,000.
‘Tangible link’ to the writer