Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 September 1895 — Making Glass Eyes. [ARTICLE]

Making Glass Eyes.

The processes used in manufacturing eyes for stuffed animals are far more simple than those employed in the manufacture of artificial human eyes. The skilled workman is provided merely with glass stuff of different colors and a blowpipe such as is commonly utilized by the glass blower. He takes a piece of wire a few inches long, and with his blowpipe attaches to one end of it a small lump of black glass, revolving the extremity of the wire in the flame of the blowpipe until the bit of black glass has assumed the form of a round button. This is the pupil of the eye that is to be. Having permitted it to cool, the workman next takes some transparent and colorless glass, like window glass, and manipulates it by means of the blowpipe, in the flame of which he causes the button to revolve. Thus is formed about the little black button a larger button of clear glass, which is destined to represent the iris or colored part of the eye surrounding the pupil. But, as has been said, this glass is colorless. The color—yellow, brown, or of, whatever tint—is applied afterward with a mineral pigment, This paint is put on the back of a button, which produces the effect desired when the eye is looked at from the front. Naturally, some modifications of this method are required for indicating the eyes of other animals. For instance, the pupil of the tiger’s eye is not round, but elongated, like any other cat’s. Accordingly, the black button must be made of corresponding shape. The eye of a living tiger is one of the most beautiful in the world. Its iris is yellow, with such wavy markings as may be discovered in the colored part of a human being’s eye. These markings are imitated with much ingenuity by the workman who applies the paint. No one can tell where the diamond goes to in combustion . Burn it, and it leaves no ash; the flame is exterior, like that of a cork, and when it has blazed itself out, there remains not even so much as would dust the antennae of a butterfly. '/