Elie Dreyfus was just out of college with a degree in industrial design and advertising when a friend offered to hook him up with an apprenticeship in Germany making glasses at a high-end optical shop. With little to hold him back, he accepted.

“Before there was formal training to be an optician, you apprenticed to learn the craft,” the Yardley optician said.

He spent two years in Germany and learned the trade well. “The Germans were the first to use 14-carat gold in their frames,” Dreyfus said. “They also taught me about service. I remember one of my teachers telling me, ‘Just take care of the people.’”

When he returned to the United States, he got a job as an optician in a group practice. But his sights were set on one day recreating his German experience here.

In 1997, that’s what he did. A client told him of a house for sale in Yardley, one that would make a fine office for an enterprising optician. But it needed work.

Dreyfus bought the house, then hired Lynn Taylor, a Doylestown architect, and the late Bruce Lesser to restore and renovate the 1794 house as his office.

“My wife, Sally, is in charge of the garden and the decorating,” he said proudly. “We met at an optical trade show in 1982 and it was love at first sight.”

Inside are antique chests, a breakfront and display cases laden with 1,000 frames representing a dozen companies. “These are the innovators,” he said, pointing to frames by designers such as FreudenHaus, Vera Wang and Beausoleil. “Ninety percent of my frames are Japanese now. They are the experts in understanding the ergonomics of how glasses fit on the head.”

On the walls are oil paintings by customer and favorite Lambertville artist Robert Beck. “I believe in supporting local artists,” he said.

“I never had to advertise,” he said, greeting a customer by name as she entered the shop. “Word of mouth has served me well.”