One of the US' lesser-known heroes is getting her time in the spotlight again.
The popular search giant recently launched a new Doodle celebrating the life and the 116th birthday of American inventor, filmmaker, and entrepreneur Altina Schinasi - the creator of the popular "cat-eye" eyeglass frame.
While Google didn't mention who designed its latest doodle, the company's team of illustrators probably made the artwork responsible for the doodle.
Altina Schinasi's Life Story
Schinasi was born on Aug. 4, 1907, in Manhattan, New York to immigrant parents, according to Google. Her mother was a native of Salonica, popularly known as Thessalonica (under Ottoman rule by then), while her father was a Sephardic Jewish Turk.
She was inspired by art, and endeavored to study more about it in her high school days. After her graduation, she went to Paris, France, to study painting, which further sparked her appreciation for the arts.
She then returned to her hometown and studied art some more at The Art Students League in New York while working as a window dresser for multiple stores on Fifth Avenue to fund her education. It was during her work that she found herself working with and learning from a handful of the prominent artists she admired, like Salvador Dalí and George Grosz.
It was at this time that her passion for art bore fruit - she used her knowledge to invent and design a different option for women's glasses, which featured round frames with mundane designs at the time.
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It was this observation that led Schinasi to invent the now-famous "cat-eye" frames, which mimicked the shape of Harlequin masks while she was attending the Carnevale festival in Venice, Italy.
The glasses were a hit with women from the late 1930s onwards. However, it almost didn't come to be - Schinasi approached and got rejected by all of the major manufacturers with her creation.
Fortunately, a local shop owner believed in her vision and asked for an exclusive design for six months. Thanks to this shop owner, Schinasi's cat-eye glasses were featured in major magazines like Vogue and Life; it even got the designer-inventor an award in 1939 - the Lord & Taylor American Design Award.
Schinasi's Other Works
However, Schinasi's work didn't stop there. According to the New York Times, she sold her eyeglass interests and moved to Los Angeles, California, where she became a filmmaker. From there, she produced "George Grosz' Interregnum," a film about George Grosz, the Weimar artist, with whom she had once studied.
For her work in that film, it was nominated for an Academy Award and won first place at the Venice Film Festival.
Schinasi relocated to Santa Fe and continued her work as a visual artist. She even wrote and published her memoir "The Road I Have Traveled," and volunteered as an art therapist. She even invented unique portrait chairs and benches which she called "Chairacters" despite her advanced age.
Schinasi passed away on Aug. 19, 1999. She is survived by her husband, Celestino Miranda, her son, Terry Sanders of Los Angeles, five grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.
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