Altina Schinasi (August 4, 1907 – August 19, 1999) was an American sculptor, filmmaker, entrepreneur, window dresser, designer and inventor. She was best known for designing the Harlequin eyeglass frame. Early life Altina Schinasi was the youngest child born to the Schinasi family. She was born at the Schinasi Mansion on Manhattan's Upper West Side on August 4, 1907. After being tutored at home, Altina attended Horace Mann and at the age of twelve left home to board at Dana Hall School in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Altina's mother took Altina and her sister to Paris shortly after her graduation from Dana Hall. There, Altina studied painting with her cousin, René Bensussan. While spending more time with Bensussan, she developed a deeper appreciation for art, and as a result, Altina chose to attend art school rather than college when she returned to the states. In New York, Altina studied with Samuel Halpert at the Roerich Museum. Her father, Morris Schinasi, was a Sephardic Jew born in Manisa, Turkey. Altina's mother, Laurette Schinasi née Ben Rubi, the granddaughter of Schinasi's business associate Joseph Ben Rubi, was a native of Salonica, then in the Ottoman Empire. Upon Morris Schinasi's death in 1928, his widow Laurette Schinasi traveled to Manisa, Turkey to establish Moris Sinasi Çocuk Hastahanesi, or Moris Sinasi Children's Hospital in the city of her late husband's birth. It remains in operation today. Philosophy “I painted for the joy of it–because it’s what I love to do. For me, art is fun. I like to make things. I’ve always liked to make things. If I couldn’t draw it and paint it, then I’d make a pillow or I’d make a quilt or I’d make something. I always had to make something and I was always looking for ideas for projects. I wanted to use my art to enrich my life.” Window dresser Altina took a job with Peter Copeland designing windows for Fifth Avenue stores. It was in this job that she found herself working alongside Salvador Dalí, who had been commissioned to design two Bonwit Teller windows. Altina worked in the Copeland workshop to build the windows that Dalí designed. George Grosz, a German artist that Altina had long admired, settled in New York after fleeing Hitler's regime in 1932. Though he taught intermittently on the faculty of the Art Students League, Altina, now in her twenties and a divorced mother of