The mysterious eye that inspired a peculiar and romantic collection | CNN

EDITOR’S NOTE: Curio is a CNN Style series spotlighting small objects and the big ideas behind them. While browsing for antiques, an eye caught the eyes of David and Nan Skier. The married couple were looking for treasures at the Cyclorama Antiques Show while in Boston for a medical conference. David, a since-retired ophthalmologist, was used to inspecting eyes all day, but not this kind: among the treasures, he spotted a delicately painted gray pupil gazing off to the side, as if lost in thought. It was set into an oval ring face adorned with blue enamel, diamonds and pearls. They’d never seen anything like it. Four decades later, the couple has collected 158 of these mysterious eye miniatures housed in jewelry and other small objects, called “lover’s eyes.” They were first popularized in Georgian England as small tokens of affection, infatuation or mourning, and examples are scattered across major museums such as the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. But the Skiers believe they have the largest collection in the world, which they have shown in a touring museum exhibition and published as a book — with a new edition comi