1 September, 2015



Inspired by connections to the era of mechanical musical instruments, and the transportive affects of sound from old gramophone and cylinder players; attire for early outdoor explorers, sport and recreation, motor vehicle, aviation, workman and engineer safety; the Komuso monks of Japan and their meditation-in-action wearing head baskets; the metaphysical paintings of Giorgio de Chirico... Lenses into the past! Music for the eyes, curious antique perspectives, meditations on vision, perception... A nostalgia for a past mysterious and undefined on up to present day.
A collection since 2008.



"Shading the eyes describes getting rid of eyes and getting rid of sutras. It describes complete eye shading and completely shaded eyes. Shading the eyes means opening the eyes in the shaded state, invigorating the eyes within shade, invigorating shade within eyes, adding an extra eyelid, utilizing the eyes within shade, and eyes themselves utilizing shade. This being so, the virtue of shading the eyes is never [mentioned] in any [sutras] other than Eye-sutras. 'You would surely pierce holes even in ox-hide' describes complete ox-hide and a complete-hide ox, it describes utilizing the ox to become a hide. This is why [possession of] the skin, flesh, bones, and marrow, and horns on the head, and nostrils, has been seen as the vigorous activity of bulls and cows. In copying the Master, the ox becomes the Eye - this is described as shading the eyes. It is the Eye becoming the ox."
- Eihei Dogen, Shobogenzo, Book 1, Chapter 21, Kankin [Reading Sutras]



"As the mind perceives all kinds of gross natural objects and admits their images into its consciousness, it creates for itself, out of this natural function, a certain mode of existence which bears the stamp of finiteness. The normal life of the soul, in other words, is kept within the limits determined by our sensory perceptions and emotions, and as long as it is full of these, it finds it extremely difficult to perceive the existence of spiritual forms and things divine. The problem, therefore, is to find a way of helping the soul to perceive more than the forms of nature, without its becoming blinded and overwhelmed by the divine light, and the solution is suggested by the old adage "whoever is full of himself has no room for God." All that which occupies the natural self of man must either be made to disappear or must be tranformed in such a way as to render it transparent for the inner spiritual reality, whose contours will then become perceptible through the customary shell of natural things."
- Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, "Abulafia and the Doctrine of Prophetic Kabbalism"



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Chronological from the early 1800s





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Curiosity with safety glasses before the collection began...









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