He had been trained and began his work at Burnham Military Camp during World War II before continuing at Christchurch\u2019s Burwood Hospital.<\/p>\n
Since the article\u2019s publication, Brown has had more inquiries and requests than he could meet.<\/p>\n
When NZME caught up with him again, he was packaging up some cases to be sent to Dunedin – just one of many shipments to the eyes\u2019 new homes.<\/p>\n
Bruce Brown was looking for a home for over 2500 artificial eyes. Photo \/ Stuart Whitaker<\/p>\n
While the collection has had to be split up, Brown said he\u2019s happy it\u2019s going to places where it will be valued.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to a variety of organisations and people for a variety of uses.\u201d<\/p>\n
He has had people visit and collect some of the prosthetic eyes, and thinks by the end of this week, they will all have gone.<\/p>\n
Some will be put on display, including at the medical history museum at Auckland Hospital and a museum in Christchurch, as well as in optometrists\u2019 shops.<\/p>\n
Among the collection were \u201cblank\u201d eyes, many of which have gone to The Incubator Creative Hub in Tauranga\u2019s Historic Village.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ones they got were some of the unfinished ones, which are smooth and will be great for people to paint in oil paint.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had some schools asking for them as well, but they use water-based and poster paints, and they won\u2019t stick to them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The finished prosthetic eyes were all hand-painted by Brown\u2019s father.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeveral people were just so taken with the skill and the artwork and the way they\u2019re made \u2013 it was a very skilful thing,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n
His father almost always made two of each prosthetic eye \u2013 even when his customer only wanted one, and, having seen the article, one past customer contacted Brown to see if he could get hold of his second eye.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe contacted me from Whanganui and said, \u2018your dad made an eye for me\u2019. It must have been over 30 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
The customer had visited Brown\u2019s father in Tauranga to have the eye made.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said \u2018I know he always made two of them and I quite often misplace mine, will you be able to find my one that he may have made?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
While people\u2019s names were written on the backs of the extra eyes, Brown was unable to find it among the collection.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did send him a couple of similar types of eyes, which won\u2019t be suitable, because they need to be the right shape and everything, but just really so he\u2019s got something just in case. But that was quite interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brown put together some information about his father to send with the various packages.<\/p>\n
He said he was pleased the story had such a good reach that enabled parts of the collection to go to the South Island, where his father started his work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He had been trained and began his work at Burnham Military Camp during World War II before continuing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61424,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[21642,3029,9064,2082,3273,4507,5158,111,43,139,69,50436,46601,50435,8690],"class_list":["post-61423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-collection","tag-eye","tag-fathers","tag-for","tag-future","tag-late","tag-man","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-prosthetic","tag-puke","tag-secures","tag-te"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}