The mysterious eye that inspired a peculiar and romantic collection

By Jacqui Palumbo | Photos: Austin Steele, CNN

(CNN) — While browsing for antiques, an eye caught the eyes of David and Nan Skier. The married couple were looking for treasures at the Cyclorama Antiques Show while in Boston for a medical conference. David, a since-retired ophthalmologist, was used to inspecting eyes all day, but not this kind: among the treasures, he spotted a delicately painted gray pupil gazing off to the side, as if lost in thought. It was set into an oval ring face adorned with blue enamel, diamonds and pearls. They’d never seen anything like it.

Four decades later, the couple has collected 158 of these mysterious eye miniatures housed in jewelry and other small objects, called “lover’s eyes.” They were first popularized in Georgian England as small tokens of affection, infatuation or mourning, and examples are scattered across major museums such as the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. But the Skiers believe they have the largest collection in the world, which they have shown in a touring museum exhibition and published as a book — with a new edition coming out next year.

Speaking from their home in Birmingham, Alabama, over video, Nan Skier lifted her hand to show the very first piece from their collection, which fits comfortably on her index finger.

“We often say that when we bought this ring, it came with a warning, and it came with a story,” Nan Skier said, recounting when they bought it from the late New York dealer Edith Weber, who specialized in rare, commemorative pieces, including mourning jewelry, and who is credited with coining the term “lover’s eye.”

The warning was to never wash her hands while wearing the ring, because the eye could wash away. And the story was about King George IV of England, then the Prince of Wales, and his deep infatuation with a Catholic commoner, Maria Fitzherbert. They married illegitimately and in secret after a series of dramatic attempts by the future king to woo her, including sending a small watercolor painting of his eye. At the end of his life, he was buried with a rendering of her own. The romantic gesture set off a trend and from around 1790 to 1830, miniature artists began to house these tiny eyes in jewels as precious keepsakes. But like most of the objects they’ve acquired, the Skiers don’t know whose eye is captured in the ring, though it’s dated to around 1790.

“We don’t know anything about the sitter. That’s part of the intrigue of lover’s eyes,” David Skier explained. “They were made to be anonymous.”

Among their collection are rings, brooches and bracelets, but other objects feature as well, including a stick pin, velvet-lined cases, a wallet and a teacup. Some objects bear inscriptions, others contain locks of hair. There are subsets of lover’s eye motifs as well that make a particular object even rarer, such as painted lips in place of an eye, like one bracelet whose clasp opens to reveal a sensuous mouth surrounded by hazy clouds.

Elle Shushan, a miniaturist paintings expert and art historian Graham Boettcher, who serves as director of the Birmingham Museum of Art, are two of the experts that have helped guide and exhibit their collection. The couple seeks out new additions from antique dealers, private sellers and auctions. Though they declined to comment on costs, original lover’s eyes can run thousands to tens of thousands of dollars.

Lover’s eyes are often memorial portraits, but “they were also for weddings, for engagements, for ‘remember me’s,’ because when you traveled, you went away for months and months and months,” Shushan said.

But they weren’t exchanged between just anyone. While miniature portraits had grown in popularity before the advent of photography, Shushan estimates that only a dozen or so renowned artists were making eye portraits, including the painters George Engleheart and Richard Cosway. Nestled inside intricate, costly designs, they were inaccessible to most.

“By the time eyes became a thing, miniatures had been in production for over 300 years in the UK, and they had filtered down the socio-economic levels so that even the butcher’s wife could have a miniature,” Shushan explained. “The Duchess of Devonshire didn’t necessarily want the same thing as the butcher’s wife had, so it was the highest level of aristocracy that started this, and it was the 1830s before it started filtering down.”

By 1890, they came back in fashion, but this time made in-house by major jewelers such as Tiffany’s, Shushan explained. Staff miniaturists painted customers’ eyes, but none were signed by the artists, Shushan said, making them even harder to find information on.

The Skiers say that original lover’s eyes are exceedingly rare, and they only acquire one or two new pieces a year. Most of the ones they come across today “are fake or terrible or have had a hard life,” David Skier explained. Like water, sunlight is a danger too. And they often see counterfeits, where eyes have been cut from larger portraits — or even laser-printed — and placed in cheap settings.

Some of the newest pieces they’ve added to their collection feature multiple eye portraits that may have been a sort of family registry, Sushan explained, such as a chandelier-style gold pendant with separate teardrop portraits, and a bracelet that features five ovals of partial visages, including a central double portrait, adorned with atmospheric elements such as leaves and clouds.

They’ve even added a contemporary piece that they commissioned themselves from an artist on Etsy, placing the painted eye in antique housing. It’s labeled in their inventory so it’s not confused for an original, but adds their own touch to their trove. Because of the Skier’s collection, Lover’s eyes have seen a resurgence of interest, and David emphasizes that it’s “not a vanity project,” but a way to preserve and document these delicate objects.

But the allure and mystery of each piece keeps them seeking as well.

“Each of these pieces is a love story of sorts,” Nan Skier said. “Somebody loved this person enough to paint a miniature of her eye and set it into this jewel. We don’t know the circumstances. We don’t know who they were, but it speaks of love between two people and how it’s expressed.”

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