Everyone was a beginner once.
Your first steps, learning to read, drive a car, or in my case, how to use a printer. (Hate those things 🖨️)
The image above was the very first spectacle frame we ever made back in 2012.
Banton 1.0
Yes, it was made of plywood and frankly it's a miracle it could open/close with those cabinet hinges I found on eBay.
Why show you this?
As adults, it's safer to shy away from being new at something because it just doesn't feel very good. Like when I try to print something.
But without that first step you deny yourself the journey.
13 years ago today, Lucy and I drove 400 miles to London Design Week with our (plywood) frames, to see if we could sell them and maybe start a business together.
I'm grateful for those plywood bits of s**t.
Relocating into our new workshop, I recently unearthed what Lucy and I call the "memories box". A tangled archive of handmade frames that I wanted to share with you. 📦
Like a parent sharing baby photos, but hopefully far more interesting.
Behold, the first ever spectacle frame made by co-founders Lucy Ross and yours truly, Jamie Bartlett.
Banton 1.0
To give a little context, this frame was designed by Lucy for her final year University project. Being the gentleman I am, I offered to help create this monstrosity as I reckoned we could make a decent attempt at it.
All these years later, I think we got hang of spectacle making.
The plywood was sourced (free) and curved using steam. Hinges were from eBay. Don't even ask about lenses as we couldn't fit them in.
Beginnings rarely come this humble.
Ahh, I nearly forgot about the leather nose pads. Little leather slugs lying around the University studio waiting to be inlaid to our whittled wooden creations.
To make them, we used a laser cutter which, l later learned, creates toxic fumes.
You only live once, right?
The idea was that leather, being a natural material, was kind to your skin. We even used it to make self-adjustable temple tips so they'd wrap around your ears.
Squirming as I write this.
As an improvement to plain ol' plywood, we really upped our game with exotic timber veneers. We discovered a company who gave free sample packs (upon request) with all manner of natural and dyed included.
Which gave us an idea...
We got all our family members from around Scotland to order sample packs which they mailed on to us. There was some really funky wooden frames made during that time, but the veneer so incredibly brittle.
To reinforce it, we added a plywood 'mid layer' to strengthen the frame. These were some of the first frames we sold during London Design Week in 2012.
Years later, we bumped into the sales rep of the exact veneer company who'd been shipping "a very curious amount of sample packs all over Scotland a few years back."
I've never wanted to laugh so much.
Some of the aforementioned colourful wood veneer, laid out on our workshop floor.
From 2012 to about 2014, we were still making frames from wood. We'd become obsessed with differentiating ourselves and people seemed to love the natural tones of some of veneers we were using at the time.
At this point, an American eyewear brand called Shwood were leading the wooden eyewear trend. But I swear, they stole our idea to strengthen their frames with a plywood mid-layer between two layers of veneer.
On the lead-up to London Design Week 2012, I remember making the metal 'cross bars' for these rather striking Aviators.
I was working in a Glasgow pub at the time and during my day shifts, I'd sit and bend these little bits of metal between pulling pints of beer.
Looking back at our early twenties, the level of obsession that Lucy and I had was unhealthy. We toiled all hours of the day like maniacs.
No regrets.
Below are some photos from London Design Week 2012 where drove the 400 miles to showcase (and hopefully sell) our very first frames.
The specific trade show we attended was Design Junction which ceased in 2019.
Lucy looks so young. (She still does.)
Now here's a story...
On day 1 of Design Junction, we didn't have any finished frames yet. In fact, I was trying to assemble them in the passenger seat of our car whilst Lucy drove us down to London.
The frames on that wall (above) were made in real-time, which thankfully happened on the 'press day'. Journalists caught sight of two very sleep deprived spectacle makers, frantically trying to get their s**t together.
We were utterly mortified that we didn't have any finished frames yet as they took photos. In hindsight, it was a serendipitous way of getting some free PR.
I'll never forget that trip to London, carrying our little pop-up kiosk on the underground tube system. Baptism of fire.
You know what? This era was pretty good.
Far less embarrassing than the images prior.
This frame (above) represents some of the best wooden frames we ever made. They were strong, reasonably elegant and won us our first retailers.
Damn right too.
By 2015, we'd spent 3 years learning all the ways not to make wooden eyewear. These were the pinnacle of all that obsession and at the time, I reckon even the guys at Shwood would agree these were 'not bad' at all.
But all that messing about with timber was about to change as we decided to start working with new materials.
Metal, and yes, acetate.
Around 2015, we'd bought some machinery. Armed with a new milling machine, we could cut various materials such as soft metals and acetate.
Being so sick of making wooden frames, we experimented with single-piece aluminium frames. We were curious to see if we could incorporate pad arms that could be bent upwards to hold little rubber nose pads.
Notice how the frame splits at the outer edges? That was so we could get the lenses-in.
We quickly realised that metal (the complete opposite to wood) wasn't great to work with either as the tooling required was way out of our budget.
Which left us with acetate.
These were some of the very first acetate frames we made.
We felt like cavemen who'd just discovered fire.
As it transpires, all those years of whittling wooden frames was good practice. Because if you can make frames from wood, you can definitely make them from acetate.
The samples (above) have these little notes attached to them which refer to various polishing methods. Ie, what materials, compounds, polishing pastes and durations seemed to work best to get the frames as smooth as possible.
This was around 2016, where we were making wood and acetate frames as part of a range of glasses that could be 'tailored' with interchangeable components.
The idea was that you could choose a customised combination of frame front, temples and temple tips. This system led us to launch a crowdfunding campaign and start attending optical tradeshows.
Venturing into acetate spectacle making, we realised that it was much easier to make acetate frame fronts than acetate temples (arms, legs, whatever you want to call them).
There's a lot of tooling involved to make acetate temples reinforced with wire, which we couldn't afford. So the next best option was to make solid metal temples using an aviation parts machinist in Glasgow.
They made parts for Boeing passenger planes, so we figured they'd be good at making accurate metal parts for our spectacles. As you can see, we were still sticking to the leather earpieces (temples tips) which were being made in Cornwall by a leather specialist.
At the time, we were designing, making and sourcing components from all over the UK. Today, we make a lot of these parts ourselves now thanks to constant reinvesting.
Around 2016, Lucy and I were becoming more confident. Opticians wanted us to make 'full acetate frames' which would have both acetate fronts and temples (arms). The problem was the sheer cost of the tools needed to make that happen.
We weren't sure if we'd ever have the space, capacity, funds or the skill to make that happen. But in typical Banton fashion, we tried other ways to make reinforced acetate temples that didn't require all that expensive machinery.
This led to some fairly interesting solutions, none of which really worked. But you can see in the images below what we were trying to achieve.
*Acetate temples must be reinforced with a metal "core" to prevent them from warping and to allow for adjustment. Metal cores are "shot" into the acetate using very precise heat and pressure - the process we were trying to mimic.
Looking back at this technique, the results are still surprisingly good. Seen above, the cores were flat with little 'screw points'. where they could be attached to the acetate to provide reinforcement.
Rather than embedding the metal core inside the temple, it could be externally applied thus avoiding the need for expensive machinery.
Of course, the screws would eventually fail and the core would just come loose. So it was another dead end which led to the next evolution of frames that eventually allow us to invest in the proper tools. (About 4 years.) Essentially, we had to take a step back, be patient and make more money if we wanted to level-up our capabilities.
The images below show our 'Profile series'. An acetate/metal combi frame that we crowdfunded. These frames were a significant era, being stocked in opticians and distributed in Japan to menswear fashion boutiques.
It was a long but transformative 4 years.
During the 'Profile Series' era, Lucy and I drilled into details that needed improving. One of those processes was riveting which, to this day, I'm still obsessed with.
The rather rough examples (above) show how we were experimenting with how to protect hinges during polishing - to stop them from being damaged or damaging other frames inside our barrelling machine.
Raking through our memories box and old photos, I realise this blog post could become encyclopaedic. There are hundreds of thousands of hours worth of mistakes, footage, imagery, experiments, drawings that I'd probably never get through.
But it's been fun and a little uncomfortable looking back over the madness.
I think here is a good stopping point for sharing photos, as the purpose was really to show the very rudimental stages of Banton. Like I said at the start, "Everyone was a beginner once."
Sane people quit
To this day, Lucy and I still can't believe we kept going with spectacle making. Especially through the early years not making any money or traces of progress.
Stupidity or bravery? Unsure.
One thing's for certain though, that first glasses frame led to something I look forward to doing each and every day with my partner in crime (Lucy).
But for your sake, I'm just glad we use acetate to make your frames now instead of plywood.
With your support, I'll hopefully keep adding to the memories box.
Thanks for looking.
Jamie, co-founder