It starts with a pair of eye glasses.

But where will it end?

Japanese detective story author Edogawa Rampo was known, for among other things, his signature glasses. He died in 1965. Yohei Kusanagi, a young Tokyo designer has come up with a replica of Rampo’s glasses as a way to encourage young people to read. One hundred copies of the replica are offered for sale. The price: Yen 84,000 or roughly US$735.

That would buy a lot of books. It makes me wonder if young Japanese potential readers have that kind of cash for a replica of Rampo’s glasses.

According to the Daily Yomiuri online + Associated Press, “His glasses, the bottom of which are rimless, have bifocal lenses and a rounded tortoiseshell frame. The writer's signature is printed on one of the bows.”

How about a replica of Somerset Maugham’s cocktail glass from the Raffles Bar? Or his walking stick? A replica of one of the ship’s Joseph Conrad in a bottle is a thought. In my case, many years hence, perhaps there might be a replica of my old, tattered and long expired press card that looks like a Martian passport.

A tip of the cap to Sarah Weinman at Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind for the article.