Quincey Eyewear : Not just pretty poly

Quincey Eyewear has built a reputation for high quality polycarbonate work but it also works with a growing range of lenses in a variety of materials and indices. Chris Bennett  travelled west to Indian Queens in Cornwall to learn more.

As John Quincey, managing director of Quincey Eye, says: 'It's surprising just how much the big labs can't do,' even before I can pose a question about his firm's history and work.

Quincey's passion for optical manufacturing, quality and design is as clear as his eagerness to get across some of the work his firm does. The base for this expertise is in the intriguingly named Cornish town of Indian Queens. But as Quincey later explains, this location doesn't stop his lab from counting some of London's top practices among its client base.

Indian Queens was named after the young Red Indian princess Pocahontas who was said to have stayed in a nearby inn when making her journey to London to meet King James I. But just how a specialist manufacturer of polycarbonate optical lenses came to make it its home is slightly less shrouded in legend, as Quincey explains.

Although he trained as a dispensing optician, Quincey decided not to practise optics but opted to work alongside his father in precision engineering. This eventually led Quincey into optical engineering with the Midland optical group Curry and Paxton. Here he wrote perhaps the first proper lens design and manufacturing software programme which, at that time, worked with an Autoflow generator.

Curry and Paxton eventually sold out to Boots and closed its lab, but Quincey had already made a career move to Yorkshire.