In recent years i've noticed that smoking paraphernalia and ephemera - your tin plate signs, cigarette cards, clay pipes, etc., have all but disappeared from our beloved antiques programmes. If they are mentioned, it's usually with a shake of the head and an accompanying 'a few years ago, these would have been worth something...'. Instead, we have to navigate miasmic, vape-infused thoroughfares and avert our eyes from the hi-viz, candy-coloured jumble of symbols and signs that make up the new smoking vernacular on our high streets. it almost makes you want to buy 20 Rothmans and a book of matches...
CentreCentre are a publisher that truly understand the value of well-thought out, beautifully designed ephemera. In the past they have valued the humble house brick, the printed punch card, the handmade album sleeve - each published in a manner that honours the subject. Now, from the collection of Billy Woods, they bring us the perfectly presented Matchbook Book which houses over 250 images of matchbooks collected between the 1970s and late 1990s. Like the beermat, postage stamp or, it's sturdier cousin, the matchbox, the matchbook was a miniature, portable work of art, a barometer of the time, and a tiny brand billboard you could slip inside your pocket. People sat at drawing boards and designed these ubiquitous mini marvels, and they were given away - in hotel lobbies, car showrooms, nightclubs and bars - in their hundreds of thousands. The resonance is here - from the initial pen marks on paper to the cordite scratched into their strike paper - these are meaningful artefacts of our age.
And the packaging? A beautiful, perfect-bound block of paper slides from within a shiny red sleeve, secured with a single staple, with each example within shown folded and open, or front and rear. It's beautiful, just like the matchbooks within.
