THE owners of Staple Hill optician Dury and Tippett have retired, after working together for more than 30 years.
Co-founder and dispensing optician Steve Dury and optometrist Helen Tippett held their last appointments before handing over to a new team on February 11.
As they prepared to sign off they told the Voice about some of the changes technology has brought to eye treatment – and the problems caused by ever-increasing screen time.
Steve co-founded the business in 1983, and it was initially known as Dury and Shaw.
It was his first business as an owner, having previously worked for other opticians.
Steve grew up in South Bristol and started out on his 57-year career as a teenager, after learning that the other guitarist in his band, Out of the Blues, was training to become a dispensing optician.
He started work as a student optician with Curry & Paxton in Park Street, in 1968.
Helen, who was brought up in South Wales, decided on her career when an optician gave a talk at her school.
She came to Bristol to do her pre-registration work at Goatman opticians in Clifton, after studying at university in London, and qualified in 1981.
She joined the practice in 1992 and became a full partner in 2005, at which point the business was renamed Dury and Tippett.
The practice was initially based in one unit in Fountain Square but expanded into a second next door about 15 years ago.
It is known for its quirky individual style, with a jukebox, artwork, reproduction Tardis-style police box and a Welsh flag among the decorations.
Steve said: “We wanted it to look as little like Specsavers as possible!”
They worked in tandem, with Helen testing patients’ eyes to draw up prescriptions that
Steve then interpreted into a finished pair of glasses.
During their careers Steve and Helen have seen technology bring many changes, from the increase in NHS cataract operations, which have transformed the sight of many patients, to the Visufit 1000 digital 3D measurement system used by Steve to help create glasses, using an array of cameras and 45 million reference points to capture facial details and eye movements.
Helen adopted 3D OCT (optical coherence tomography) scanning, a process similar to ultrasound, that produces images of the interior of the eye to help identify the earliest signs of conditions.
On the flip side, Steve and Helen say the increasing use of smartphones and other screens is leading to an “epidemic” of short-sightedness, or myopia, among children.
Treatments have been developed to manage the condition, using specially-designed contact lenses and eye drops, but because it is not funded by the NHS, many parents won’t spend the extra money on it.
Steve and Helen sold the business to the Hakim Group of independent opticians last November but stayed on for three months as consultants, while the new practitioners settled in.
Steve said: “We’ve been working together so long, for about 30 years, that I can’t imagine working without Helen. It seems a good time to go.
“The business will carry on as Dury and Tippett, even though we have gone into the sunset.”
Helen and Steve both said they will miss their patients, most of whom are “lovely people” – many have been customers for years.
Steve says he won’t miss the 6am starts travelling from his home in North Somerset to the practice.
He plans to spend more time playing the guitar – he recently picked up a Fender Ultra II Stratocaster – and refurbishing a model railway that his son, now 40, last played with as a child.
Helen, who lives in Kingswood, is planning to spend more time with her grandchildren and potter in the garden with her husband.