New York in the frame

Seven one-off spectacle frames designed with an admiration for New York’s places and faces. From the Mudd Club to Studio 54, the Flatiron to the Guggenheim. Handmade in the Cubitts King’s Cross workshop.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s brief for the Guggenheim was that it should be like no other museum in the world. This frame recreates its organic forms. A front layered with heavily softened ‘inflated’ style acetate, a bridge gap, and thick paddle temples. Made in pink acetates based on Wright’s original colour concepts.

Originally called the Fuller Building, the wedge shape of the Flatiron led the Tribune to label it a ‘stingy piece of pie’. At that time, it was the only large-scale development in the area, leading critics to claim it would be blown over by the wind. As Sadakichi Hartmann wrote: ‘A curious creation, no doubt, but can it be called beautiful?’

The bright lights of ‘The Showplace of the Nation’, with multiple concentric acetate laminations referencing the yellow stage and bright façade. Including laser-engraved Cubitts ‘neon’ signage, and gradient lenses with a soft rosy glow.

A brutalist frame, based on the geometry of the Marcel Breuer designed building at 945 Madison Avenue, created to house the Whitney Museum of American Art. 8mm thick laminated acetate, with an angular structure, deep chamfered edges, sharp corners, and geometric ‘window’ lenses.

An ornate take on the bar in the Carlyle Hotel, where Ludwig Bemelmans exchanged murals for a year and a half’s accommodation. A bold cat-eye celebrating the bar’s Art Deco and illustrative motifs, with laminated acetate combinations drawn from the velvet furnishings and cut crystal glassware.

An neo-expressionist ode to the Mudd Club, second home to Lower Manhattan’s underground scene during the turn of the 1980s. A riot of geometry with contrast acetate lamination in colours taken from the work of club regular Jean-Michel Basquiat, and temple eye details.

A response to the glitz and the dark glamour, in a frame that would have shone on its dancefloor. Black layered lamination with white recessed details, metallic lenses and Cubitts rivets in shining gold, and a laser-engraved club sign.