PLAY THINGS

Gail Gherardi and Barbara McReynolds have certainly made spectacles of themselves. Twelve years ago, McReynolds went to a garage sale and shelled out $5 for a pair of metallic-gold-over-black plastic eyeglasses. “I had never seen anything like them,” she says.

It seemed an innocent enough purchase, especially for an optician. But then, it turned into an obsession. In 1979, she and Gherardi, also an optician, opened their l.a. Eyeworks boutique; they spent their spare time combing swap meets and yard sales.

They put their finds in shoe boxes, dragging them out to display in their Melrose shop or just to show off to friends. This was not just a quirky collection, this was 2,500 pairs of glasses, some in the most amazing configurations--a palm frond sprouting from the bridge of a nosepiece, rhinestoned pistols aimed across eyeballs, Trojan helmets facing off over lenses. Not to mention designer specs by Elsa Schiaparelli and historical frames from Tibet and other far-off places. What does one do with such a stockpile? Why, share it, of course. Two years ago, 144 of the more fabulous frames became a traveling show--it opened in New York, moved to Kansas City and now is home at the Craft & Folk Art Museum, in the May Company on Wilshire Boulevard at Fairfax Avenue. But not for long. On August 12, it will depart for Tokyo’s Shiseido Gallery.

“We just bought the specs because we love them,” Gherardi says. “We had no idea everyone else would, too.”

Success always has its drawbacks--the frames, bought in back yards and optics warehouses--are now insured for $250,000. Like precious jewels, they travel in special cases and no one can try them on. “If we even want to hold them,” Gherardi says wistfully, “we have to put on special white gloves.”

But they can play, unfettered, with the more than 2,000 pairs still in shoe boxes in their closets.