Great read: History of Matchbox Graphic Design

[El Presidente]

Pour yourself a drink, light a cigar and enjoy this fantastic article 

 

 A History of Matchboxes and Matchbox design. 

Matches are composed of a sliding-drawer within a sleeve, and since their appearance by the very nature of their packaging, have facilitated the widest range of graphic design and artistry.
 

One of the earliest descriptions of a match may be found in the book Records of the Unworldly and the Strange, by Tao Gu, China, circa 950AD,  that states:

If there occurs an emergency at night it may take some time to make a light to light a lamp. But an ingenious man devised the system of impregnating little sticks of pinewood with sulphur and storing them ready for use. At the slightest touch of fire they burst into flame…This marvelous thing was formerly called a “light-bringing slave”, but afterwards when it became an article of commerce its name was changed to ‘fire inch-stick’.

 

It has been suggested that the invention was made in 577AD by women of the Northern Qi, (or Sui) who were unable to leave the confines of their city to search for tinder, because it was under siege by the Northern Zhou and Chen.

 When the palace ran out of kindling, and almost no means for heat or cooking, she dipped small pieces of pine into sulfur. Once the sulure dried the sticks made fire when rubbed together or it by sparks.

 

. ThIs 1920's Chinese openwork brass holder  designed to take a standard box of small wood matches and ornamented with very finely detailed imperial dragons against cloud backgrounds with waves below and the encircling the blue pill representing the elixer of immortality.

 

The first friction match was born from the alchemical experiments of Hennig Brandt in Hamburg in 1669, who was attempting to transform an olio of base metals into gold, and instead accidentally produced the element phosphorous. He ignored his discovery, but British physicist Robert Boyle in 1680 coated coarse paper in phosphorous, and a splinter of wood in sulphur. When the wood was drawn through the folded paper, it burst into flames. Due to the scarcity of phosphorous, this invention was little more than an expensive novelty for the rich. In 1817 a French chemist created what he called “the Ethereal Match,” a piece of paper coated with a compound of phosphorous that ignited when exposed to air. The paper was vacuum-sealed in a glass tube called the “match,” which was ignited when the tube was smashed.

 

In 1827, John Walker, English chemist and apothecary, of Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham, apparently by accident, created a fire by scrapping a potassium-chlorate coated stick, over a surface covered by antimony sulphide, on the hearth. Walker had been experimenting with explosives and the making of percussion caps for cartridges and was almost certainly aware of the experiments by Irish physicist, Robert Boyle (of the fame Boyle's Law), who in 1680 had covered a small piece of paper with phosphorous and coated a small piece of wood with sulfur, and had shown that rubbing the coated wood across the paper would create a fire. Walker's experiment led him to produce the first ‘matches’, which were initially made with a cardboard splint although pine veneer was later substituted. In these first friction matches, Walker used antimony sulfide, potassium chlorate, gum, and starch. He did not patent his matches, which he called "Congreves". His first sale of the matches was on April 7, 1827, to a certain solicitor by the name Mr. Hixon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Swedish Matchboxes Established the Broad Parameters of Design for the Rest of the World.

It was in Sweden that Edvard Lundström (1815-1888) developed the Swedish chemist Gustaf Erik Pasch's idea of safety match and applied for its patent with a phosphor-free character. Johan's younger brother, Carl Frans Lundström (1823-1917) was the entrepreneur and industrialist who helped him to set up a safety match factory in Jönköping, Sweden in 1844-1845. 

CONTINUED  (and well worth while)

 

[Drguano]

My favorite match box...

[Habana Mike]

Love the Swissair offering! 

You were given matches on the plane and allowed to smoke! I'm actually old enough to remember those days...

[El Presidente]