[SHADOW BOX]. Six antique glass prosthetic eyes in their original mailing box and original cotton padding Caffin, G.D. (Optician). Duffy, Siobhan (artist) Art and Design,Boston Book Fair 2025,Medicine

Artistic composition of six antique glass prosthetic eyes, embedded in their original cotton and mailing box (ca. 153 x 65 mm), surrounded by pale blue dried flowers and stems, the entire composition accomplished by means of a Zoom Box which has subsequently been framed with reddish gold painted wood (283 x 235 x 58 mm). A WORDLESS ARTISTIC POEM WROUGHT FROM THE BYPRODUCTS OF COMMERCIAL OPTOMETRY AND DISCARDED FLOWERS. BLURRING THE BOUNDARIES BETWEEN ART AND VISION, SEEING AND NOT-SEEING, THE PAST AND THE PRESENT, THIS ASTONISHING ASSEMBLAGE DEFIES OUR ABILITY TO DESCRIBE IT. With its six antique prosthetic glass eyes, our shadow box quietly references the art and science of provincial English optometry: here disparate relics are carefully arranged and preserved behind "glass," thereby allowing the past to become vividly present to modern eyes. The optician was the well known firm of G.D. Caffin, Liverpool. The recipient of the box of glass eyes was Mr. Arthur Lomas (1896-1976), of Helsby (Cheshire), formerly of Sutton Hall Farm, Sutton Weaver. The stamps appear to have been postmarked 9 Aug. 1940. Certainly the 1p postage-revenue stamp is the 1940 Royal Mail Centenary Stamp ("Victoria / George / 1840 [1p] 1940"). In the 1939 England and Wales Register, the occupation of Arthur Lomas at 77 Chester Road is given as "Lead press maker at B[ritish] I[nsulated] Cables; heavy work." That house was razed and is now the site of a Tesco parking lot. The artist, Siobhan Duffy, lives and works in upstate New York. MUST BE SEEN TO BE FULLY APPRECIATED.