Te Puke man seeks new home for 2500 artificial eyes collection

A small part of the collection. Photo / Stuart Whitaker

What has more than 2500 eyes, can’t see, but is looking for a new home? It sounds like a riddle – but it really isn’t.

The answer is a basement in Te Puke, and the artificial eyes belong to Bruce Brown, who is searching for a new home for them.

The eyes were bequeathed to him by his father, James Brown, when he died 29 years ago.

James Brown was a prosthetic eye maker who travelled around the North Island offering his services. He was also a dental technician at Burnham Military Camp during World War II.

After the war, he went to work at Burwood Hospital. A new method of making prosthetic eyes had been developed in the 1930s using polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), commonly known as acrylic glass or Plexiglas.

Before that, they had been made from glass, which was much more fragile, Bruce said.

“When he started working in 1948 or 1947 in Burwood Hospital, they had a couple of innovative guys from England who came out because they’d been fixing up the soldiers from the Second World War,” Bruce said.

“The guy [Dad] learned off had made them in England.”

Bruce Brown is looking for a home for over 2500 artificial eyes. Photo / Stuart Whitaker

After he left the hospital, James still worked with its surgeons, but also began his own business, travelling the South Island. He later moved north and did the same throughout the central North Island, Taranaki, the Manawatū and Hawke’s Bay.

Each eye he made was unique, and he would paint the irises by hand – sometimes sitting in front of the patient. He would add bits of red velvet to mimic veins in the whites of the eyes too, said Bruce.

While he was at university, Bruce would help his father with jobs such as polishing the eyes, and later he sometimes travelled with him too.

But it wasn’t just prosthetic eyes for humans that James made. He also supplied artificial eyes for taxidermists, provided eyes for a wax work exhibition in Christchurch in the 1970s and for exhibits at Waiouru Army Museum.

He carried cases of artificial eyes around with him whenever he travelled.

“If someone showed up he would say: ‘This one fits’ and he would sell it to them for a reasonably small amount: $300-$400. Now they are about five or six thousand,” said Bruce.

A small part of the collection. Photo / Stuart Whitaker

He said people often couldn’t even afford that, but James still made sure they could have their artificial eye.

“He did it because he enjoyed it and he enjoyed seeing people who were thinking ‘It’s the end of my life’ and all of a sudden they could look human.

“One of his quotes was that: ‘Everyone has the divine right to look human’.”

The eye making took plenty of know-how, and James always used Winsor and Newton paint “because it didn’t fade”.

“The painting took a bit of skill, but then there was also fitting it into the eye socket and getting it comfortable. Everyone’s eyes are different,” Bruce said.

For almost every patient, James would make two artificial eyes, even though many people only bought one. This is the reason the collection is so large.

Bruce said it was surprising how many people lost eyes either through accidents or something like cancer.

“Over the years, he thought he had about 4000 patients – he always made two and sometimes people bought two because they’d go swimming or something and lose an eye.

“Other times, they were quite happy to have the one.”

There is an order to the collection, and Bruce is confident that if someone had gone back to his dad asking for a replacement, he would quickly be able to find the second eye he had made.

Bruce has decided he needs to find a new home for the collection because he is downsizing.

He has advertised in the South Island and in the New Zealand Herald with little response.

He said he doesn’t have any firm ideas who might want the collection.

“There’s no real reason why they all need to go to the same place.”

Bruce Brown with one of the trays from the prosthetic eye collection. Photo / Stuart Whitaker

He wonders if there is a medical museum where they might be welcome, or perhaps an optometrist might like to have a tray on display.

“Really seems such a shame for them just to effectively be put into storage or biffed.”

Bruce said if people want to make money from the eyes, he would want people to purchase them.

However, he would gift them to a “worthy” cause like a museum, if one wanted them.

To contact Bruce about the collection, email: faberbronz@gmail.com.