Sight Blinders
a short museum of the narrowed view
Run by GOGHINI, who make Focus Frames.

Every focused creature
had help.

For two hundred years people have used the same trick: cover the edges of the eye and the mind settles. This is the history of that trick and where it ended up.

A racehorse mid-gallop wearing a blinker hood
Vintage sepia portrait of a plough horse wearing leather blinkers
The field · 1800s

The plough horse

A horse sees nearly all the way around itself. Useful in the wild, a problem in harness. Blinkers cut out the movement behind and beside it. The furrows got straighter and the horse got calmer.

A peregrine falcon wearing a tooled-leather falconry hood on a gloved fist
The glove · older still

The falconer's hood

Falconers worked it out a thousand years earlier. The fastest animal alive is also easily distracted, and a leather hood is what keeps it calm on the glove. Take the hood off and it sees one thing and goes.

Profile of a person wearing matte black side-shielded glasses at a bright window
The office · now

The human

Your visual field is about 200 degrees; your work occupies maybe 30 of them. The rest is taken up by passing colleagues, notification glows and swinging doors. Focus Frames apply the same trick: matte black frames with integrated side shields.

Focus Frames

The idea came from the stable and the glove. The design is ours: side-shielded frames for open-plan offices, busy homes and busy heads. Clear or tinted, prescription lenses available.

Meet them at goghini.com →