- About
- Visiting
- What’s On
- Venue hire
- Catalogues
- Collections
- 101 Treasures of Chetham’s
- Digital Resources
- The Flowers of Histories
- A Book of Hours from France
- The Manchester Scrapbook
- Thomas Barritt of Manchester
- Art Treasures Examiner of 1857
- Manchester Association for Constitutional Order
- The North Western Museum of Science and Industry: Some Reminiscences by Richard Hills
- Criminal Manchester
- The Cup of Destiny
- Athenaeum Souvenir
- Middle English Manuscripts
- Manchester and Liverpool of Today
- Hollingworth’s Mancuniensis
- Memoir of Cecil Wray
- William Seward’s Diary
- The Anti-Monopolist
- Fishwick’s History of Rochdale
- Knyvett’s Defence of this Realm
- Tractatus de Nigromantia
- Axon Ballads
- Printed Books & Ephemera
- Archives & Manuscripts
- Prints and Photographs
- Blog
- Support us
At the sign of the spectacles
One of the most striking shop signs in Victorian Manchester was that of the optician T. M. Bowen, whose premises at 27 Market Place were dominated by an enormous pair of spectacles.
Bowen’s was one of Manchester’s great success stories, and practised for over half a century in the same premises, the Wellington Inn (now reconstructed in Shambles Square next to the cathedral).
We have a number of items relating to the firm, including a splendid piece of advertising in verse from the 1820s, a later advertisement from a trade directory in which Bowen announced that they been in business for 56 years, an illustrated business card and a wonderfully detailed photograph of 1859. Obviously having an eye for colour as well as his profession, Bowen’s business acumen is here celebrated in verse:
Any colour you fix on – blue, purple, or green,
Which your elegant taste may incline to select,
Can of Bowen be had. Such a choice may be seen
As will prove that his judgement is always correct.
