18 Beautiful Vintage Matchboxes for Endless Design Inspiration
VINTAGE MATCHBOXEs: a graphic designers dream
If you have browsed design inspiration on Pinterest, you might have stumbled on vintage matchboxes before. They are a graphic designers dream; quirky illustrations and typography, imaginative layouts and bright colours, all crammed onto a tiny hand-held package. As I came across more and more, I started to wonder about their history. Why they are they all so damn cool?
A brief history
The safety match was invented somewhere around 1850 and was somewhat of a ‘game changer’ at the time.
Up until then, various matches existed but were pretty hellish and unsafe to use. One match was made mostly of sulphur and was lit by dipping it into an asbestos bottle filled with sulphuric acid. Yikes.
Another involved the use of white phosphorous, not a nice chemical by any stretch of the imagination. Put it this way, one matchbox would contain enough of it to kill a person (and it actually became a popular suicide method - fun!)
Even worse if you worked in the factory making them - you would most likely develop “phossy jaw”, a degenerative bone disease which literally made your jaw fall off. No joke.
Needless to say, back then you probably didn’t want to play with matches…
matchbox art
The birth of the safety match changed everything and marked the beginning of the matchbox art heyday. As the matches needed to be struck, the box had become an essential part of the packaging. Matchbox companies realised that to entice people to buy their boxes, they needed to appeal to their interests with eye-catching, colourful designs. That’s when things got interesting.
In the 1800/1900s, “cool” stuff included things like celebrities (war heroes, monarchs) new technology (trains, planes, industrial stuff) and animals (my personal favourites!).
This drive to impress and entice is probably why I love them so much; it really feels like creativity was encouraged, that the designers were told to experiment, be bold. They wanted to delight and excite the user every time they pulled it out to light a candle or smoke a cigarette. This creative freedom led to some truly amazing, if very tiny, works of art.
Anyway, check out a small selection of my favourites below. If that’s not enough for you, check out my Pinterest board and get stuck in!
