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After seven years of being in our shop, and scanning and photographing countless oddities from the eyewear world, it felt like the right time to put a stamp on it. The result is our very first book, a documentation of the industry we work so closely with, told from our own perspective.
“3000 Days of Archives Related to the Optics and Glasses Frame Industry” is a visual journey through the forgotten corners of the eyewear industry. Some untold stories, brands, objects, and people who shaped its evolving landscape.
The collection was started in 2018 by the Bidules team, and is an ongoing project, taking no claim to meaning, blending scanography and photography to explore fragments of a trade shaped by time, chance, and memory.
The publication was developed under the creative direction of Mathys Dos Santos, a 23-year-old Brussels-based photographer focused on archival storytelling and small print-run publishing.
Published by Bidules, the book is a testament to the richness of forgotten material culture, placing itself at the crossroads of visual culture, industrial design, photography and archival research, documenting a lesser-known sector of the eyewear history through a curated lens.
The book was launched on September 25th, 2025, as part of our shop’s seventh anniversary. To mark the event, we’ve invited a lineup of artists, musicians, writers, and curators who, each in their own way, work with some form of collecting. Through performance, talks, and music, they expand the world of the book into an evening celebrating the breadth of collecting that happens all around us. From the surreal spoken-word-music experiments of Odd Job, to the careful curations of bog bodies press, to reflections on collecting from the personal practices of Ewout De Cat, Jacob Lambrecht and Anwyn Howarth.
Here is a short introduction of all of our wonderful participants:
Artists Camille Bleker and Brecht Hayen formed “Odd Job,” a project that melds both of their interests with spoken word and music and transforms them into radio shows and live performances. Camille blends short stories and poetry with themes of surrealism and absurdism. Giving a voice to inanimate objects such as a fork, a kitchen mixer, or a bed cover. Brecht creates music and is fascinated by strange sounds, cassette recordings, spontaneous music, and explores the creation of eerie instruments by sampling his voice. In their work, they present a selection of spoken-word tunes, oddball experiments, and swift concoctions from well-, under-, and lesser-known artists. Their show immerses listeners in the peculiar and unusual aspects of life with engulfing atmospheres and stories. It is a celebration of the world’s extraordinary oddities.
bog bodies press is a multi-disciplinary publishing house founded by Lilou Angelrath and Réiltín Ní Aodhagáin. They create print, digital and in-person platforms that engage people in our oldest communal practice – storytelling – in ways that build meaningful connection and spotlight the brilliant stories that lie beyond the limits of mainstream literature.
The press is founded on the belief that the stories we have access to shape our perspectives. They can show us things we’ve never imagined and reflect parts of ourselves we thought we’d never see. bog bodies press uses their award-winning design, diverse catalogue of phenomenal stories and warm, welcoming events to see the world in more nuanced, vibrant, complicated and wonderful ways. Their curation of talks for Bidules did, hopefully, bring you into that world too.
Ewout De Cat comes to us from his bookstore, out of stock, in Ghent, which is filled with ephemera, books, prints, photographs and vernacular and folk art. out of stock is renowned for its vast, expertly curated collection, but Ewout is coming to talk about his own personal collection of Braille – exploring what it means to be a collector, and when to let go.
Jacob Lambrecht doesn’t try to make sense of the world but life flows in, and life flows out in various forms. These congregate in collections that become wells of inspiration and curiosity for his artistic practice. He talks us through one of his collections; an attempt to create his own familiar, particular sense of disorder in this disordered world.
Anwyn Howarth is a musician, filmmaker and producer who has been writing original songs since the age of 14. Although she hasn’t released any of them under her stage name, Angel Face, she often performs her music live at intimate venues across the world, leaving her with a vast collection of lyrics, moments, and memories spanning more than ten years; it can only be accessed by others when she gets on stage with her guitar.
If you missed the launch or aren’t based in Brussels, you can find the publication in the following (book)stores:
Peinture Fraîche (brussels, be)
Saint-Martin Bookshop (brussels, be)
Librairie Sans titre (paris, fr)
Musée de la Lunette (morez, fr)
Musée du peigne et de la plasturgie (oyonnax, fr)
NorthOptical (portland, me, usa)
We had such a great time making the book, and sharing it with all of Bidules’ community, onto more collecting, more books and more glasses!
