At the Algha Spectacle Works

Between Victoria Park and the site of the 2012 Olympics, lies a narrow stretch of land known as Fish Island, filled with a crowded array of dignified old brick industrial buildings. Most are turned over to artists’ studios now, but standing amongst them at the corner of Smeed Rd is the world famous Algha Works, home to Britain’s last metal spectacle frame manufacturer, operating from here for the past century.

In this early steel frame building of 1907, the gold National Health Service spectacles that once corrected the sight of the population were made by Max Wiseman & Co, founded in 1898. Think of any of the famous gold rimmed glasses of the twentieth century, from Mahatma Gandhi to John Lennon, to every bank manager and headmaster, and this where they were manufactured. The heart-shaped sunglasses for Stanley Kubrick’s “Lolita” and, more recently, Harry Potter’s geeky specs were also made here.

You might say that Max Wiseman was a visionary in the world of spectacles. “As a young man of nineteen, I was inspired and tremendously enthusiastic at the possibility of ‘goldfilled’ being the future of spectacles.” he wrote breathlessly in the fiftieth anniversary edition of “The Optician” in 1941, and the rest was history. “Goldfilling” means coating the frame with a sleeve of gold which extends the life of the spectacles by preventing corrosion. Cheaper and lighter than solid gold, resistant to corrosion and longer lasting than gold plating, fourteen carat goldfilled spectacles from the Algha Works were universally available on the NHS in this country for forty years.

“They manufactured two and a half million frames a year here, when two hundred people worked in this building,” Peter Viner, the current managing director told me,“they lived next door and the building opposite was a school.” And he gestured back in time, and towards the window of his office on the top floor with views back across the East End in one direction and to the Olympic stadium in the other. When Peter came here in 1996, there were over fifty employees and today there are just fifteen, yet the ghosts of the past workforce linger in this light and spacious utilitarian building with its magnificent tiled stairwells and toilets.

http://spitalfieldslife.com/2011/06/10/at-the-algha-spectacle-works/

The spectacles factory unchanged since 1932.

In 1932, entrepreneur Max Wiseman imported into the UK an entire factory of spectacle frame-making machinery and staff from Germany.

The Algha Works factory was born at Fish Island in east London and fast became a leading manufacturer of frames, including the eternally fashionable "round-eye".

Now the only frame maker left in Britain, the factory is still in business today producing glasses under the Savile Row brand - and mainly exports its products.

The original machines are still used to hand-craft the spectacles, which have been worn by the likes of Harry Potter, Denzel Washington and Johnny Depp.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22766785 includes video.