Genuine 1920s Antique Glasses for Sale

Eyeglasses Warehouse is the number one provider of vintage eyewear from every era. Our selection of 1920s glasses includes antique spectacles our team carefully restores, as well as retro reproduction pieces. All of our vintage eyeglasses at Eyeglasses Warehouse are optical quality, meaning you can fit them with prescription lenses, reading lenses, or sunglass lenses. Alternatively, you can leave the plain glass in place for a pair of glasses for a Flapper costume or Jazz Age style. You can see all of our authentic 1920s era glasses here.

About Our 1920s Eyeglasses for Men and Women

The 1920s was a pivotal decade for eyewear. As fashions changed rapidly during the Roaring 20s, glasses went through changes too. The most significant was the introduction of nose pads in 1921, a quickly adopted invention that made glasses more comfortable and functional than ever before.

But the 1920s also laid the foundation for glasses as a fashionable accessory. Optical manufacturers like American Optical, Art-Craft, and Shuron introduced men’s glasses and women’s glasses with separate styling options meant to complement the wearer’s appearance.

Marshwood Glasses

With the arrival of nose pads in 1921, the Marshwood style came into prominence. Before the nose pad, the connector piece between lenses was most often the saddle bridge. This simple curved metal piece did little to keep glasses from falling off, and often had to be combined with temples that curved completely around the ears.

Nose pads now meant glasses could sit further away from the face and offer adjustability for a more comfortable fit. The temple pieces kept a prominent curve for most of the remainder of the decade, but they began to diminish to the arm styles in modern glasses.

The Marshwood style in particular used gold or silver hardware. The antique gold glasses were typically gold filled, meaning they were made by wrapping dozens of thin sheets of gold around each other to reach the desired thickness. Marshwood eyeglasses options included:

• Wire Rimmed Glasses
• Rimless Vintage Glasses

For rimmed and rimless glasses, the lens shape was often round, oval, or ovoid (egg-shaped). These vintage round glasses and gold wire glasses are some of the most popular in our inventory, and we carry a wide range of sizes, shapes, and styles.

Horn Rimmed Glasses

For men’s glasses, horn-rimmed eyeglasses became a popular style during the beginning of the 1920s. The frames were made from horn or tortoiseshell and, unlike wire frame glasses, the frames were thick. As wearing glasses became a more acceptable look during the Jazz Age, men embraced these bolder glasses.

Horn-rimmed glasses had decreased in favor by the end of the decade as people preferred the more durable wire frames. This lack of durability also makes antique horn rimmed glasses a rarer find today and a unique fashion accessory.

Ful-Vue Glasses

American Optical introduced Ful-Vue glasses in the mid-1920s, possibly in response to the growing number of Americans on the roads as cars became more widely available. The Ful-Vue glasses were an adaptation of the Marshwood style that moved the temples from the midpoint of the lens rims to the top corners. The wearer then had unobstructed peripheral vision, which was important when driving.

Like the original Marshwood style glasses, Ful-Vue glasses quickly became the standard for eyeglasses and sunglasses and soon other manufacturers began producing their own. You can identify Ful-Vue style glasses in our inventory based on where the temple piece connects to the lens.

Retro 1920s Glasses

While many of our 1920s glasses are authentic Jazz Age frames that we have reclaimed and restored, we also produce a variety of 1920s rimless glasses and rimmed glasses. These use standard materials for today’s glasses for a comfortable fit and durable pair of glasses, but have the iconic vintage style of the early 1900s.

We invite you to browse our inventory of original and reproduction 1920s eyeglasses, and check back often if you are looking for a pair of vintage glasses with specific features as we are always adding new products.