Some frames are made to fill a shelf.
Others are made by people who have spent their entire lives perfecting a single craft — cutting acetate, fitting titanium, coaxing raw materials into something that feels almost alive when you hold it.
The difference is immediately obvious. And it’s the reason we travel to Paris every year — not to follow trends, but to find the makers.
At Murphys the Opticians, we’re drawn to a handful of places in the world where eyewear is made the way it always has been. Slowly. Carefully. With a level of skill that takes generations to develop.
These are those places.
Japan. Sabae, Fukui Prefecture.
There is a small city in the mountains of central Japan that produces around ninety-six percent of the country’s entire domestic eyewear output.
Sabae, in Fukui Prefecture, has been making eyewear since the early 1900s. What began as a cottage industry — local farmers crafting frames through the winter months — grew over decades into one of the most sophisticated manufacturing ecosystems in the world.
The workshops here are often family-run. Skills are passed from parent to child, generation to generation, refined with each one. Titanium is worked to tolerances measured in fractions of a millimetre. Acetate is shaped and polished by hand, stage by stage, until the surface has that particular depth and warmth that you simply cannot replicate with machinery alone.
Sabae artisans are not making eyewear for speed. They are making it for permanence.
Several of the collections we carry at Murphys the Opticians are born from Sabae craftsmanship. Orgreen, the Danish brand renowned for its use of titanium and bold, considered colour, is crafted there. Garrett Leight, the Californian label with a quietly confident aesthetic, draws on Japanese manufacturing at its finest. And SALT. — arguably one of the most thoughtfully designed American eyewear brands today — is handcrafted entirely in Sabae.
When you hold one of these frames, you’re holding something made in a workshop where the person who made it probably started learning their trade decades ago.
That’s what you feel when a frame is right.
France. The Jura Mountains.
Tucked into the Jura region of eastern France — where the mountains meet the border of Switzerland — is the town of Morez.
They have been making eyewear here since the late 1700s.
The region developed its trade through metalworking tradition, and as the nineteenth century progressed, the craft of frame-making became deeply embedded in local life. Morez became known across Europe as a centre of precision and quality. The Jura was the place where French eyewear was made.
That heritage never left.
Today, the Jura and the broader French Massif Central region remain home to makers who still prize hand production, considered materials, and a design philosophy that has always valued individuality over volume.
Anne et Valentin is the finest expression of this tradition. Founded in France, and crafted there with genuine artisanal care, Anne et Valentin frames are unlike anything mass-produced. The shapes are sculptural. The acetates are rich and unusual. These are frames for people who want to be themselves, not mirror anyone else.
Every pair carries the spirit of a region that has been quietly, confidently, making beautiful things for over two hundred years.
Italy. The Cadore Valley, Belluno.
In the northeast of Italy, where the Dolomite mountains descend toward the Veneto plains, lies the Cadore valley.
For more than a century, this stretch of the Belluno province has been Italy’s eyewear heartland. The terrain made precision craft a necessity — isolated communities in these valleys developed extraordinary skill in working metals and materials by hand. Optical manufacturing took root here in the nineteenth century and never left.
The Cadore produces eyewear with the same sensibility as the finest Italian leather goods or tailoring. Attention to detail is not a selling point. It’s simply the standard.
LGR — Luca Gnecchi Ruscone — is one of the most distinctive brands in our collection, and its Italian roots run deep. Inspired by the Italian explorer tradition and the aesthetics of North Africa and the Mediterranean, LGR frames are crafted in Italy with exceptional material quality and a romantic, adventurous spirit. The acetates are dense and lustrous. The designs are confident without being loud.
LGR eyewear feels like it belongs to a life well-lived.
Designed in Antwerp. Crafted in France.
Not all great eyewear comes from a mountain valley or a centuries-old manufacturing district.
Sometimes it comes from a studio in the middle of a city that simply refuses to make anything ordinary.
Theo was founded in Antwerp in 1987, and from the beginning it operated by its own rules entirely. Where other brands were chasing commercial appeal, Theo was making frames that were asymmetric, theatrical, joyful, and completely unexpected. Antwerp — a city with a long tradition of craft, diamond-cutting, and fashion — proved the perfect home for a creative studio committed to making eyewear as an art form.
But here’s what makes Theo particularly special: the frames are crafted in France. Designed with Antwerp’s creative fearlessness, then brought to life by French artisans with the precision and skill that region has been producing for generations. Two great European craft traditions, working together.
The result is frames designed with a sense of play and genuine creative freedom that is rare anywhere in the industry. Wearing Theo is a statement. It says something about who you are.
Why This Matters to Us
We travel to Paris every year for our buying trips. We go to find these collections. To meet the designers. To hold the frames in our hands and understand what makes them worth bringing back to Wexford.
Because the alternative — stocking whatever is on trend, whatever carries the biggest logo — was never what Murphys the Opticians was about.
Since 1961, this practice has been built on the belief that eyewear should be well made, genuinely individual, and worth keeping for years.
The makers in Sabae, the Jura, the Cadore, and Antwerp share that belief.
It’s why we carry their work.
Come in and see the difference for yourself.