Phillumeny (or How We Came To Own A Thousand Matchboxes)
It all started, as so many things do, at a car boot sale about 20 years ago. We came across a retired pilot, military I think, who had flown all around the world and had collected many matchbooks on his travels. He had a bag of what must have been 300 or so and they were from all over the place; Europe, the Middle East, North & South America etc. and he simply didn't want them anymore. Nor did anybody else at the car boot it seems, as he practically gave them to us as soon as showed any interest. I think we gave him a couple of pounds, certainly not much more than that.
Now I used to be a smoker, not a heavy one, but part of the pleasure for me, it turned out, was the ceremony and ritual around choosing a cool looking packet, and a cool looking matchbox, the lighting and solemn enjoyment. It was cool and there is no point in pretending otherwise. Of course now it is anything but cool and I stopped smoking years ago, but I still enjoy the matches, and that is where candles come in. Yes, I collect candles too on holidays and trips. I'll pick up a vintage candlestick or holder at fairs and, if all else fails, I always have a bag of tea lights to hand. I get almost as much pleasure selecting the matchbox and lighting the candle as I ever did with smoking.
We had more than enough matches to last us many years of weekend candle enjoyment, and I started taking photos and researching the places these matchbooks and boxes came from, which I still do from time to time. Skip forward to 2025 and we happened to mention this love of matchbook design to the father of my son's partner. "Oh, I have some of those just taking up space, would you like them?" he asked. I said that of course we would.
Some time passed, then one afternoon a knock on the door and what we thought was a maybe a box of matchbooks being delivered turned out to be at least a thousand, including mint pre-assembled unused ones, four huge albums of covers, a massive plastic box of both boxes and books, seriously it was an enormous collection.
Well, he didn't quite rub his hands together and say "they're your problem now" but it was pretty close. We now have matchboxes coming out of our ears, in drawers, in baskets, in big plastic boxes. We're still using the original load we got from 20 years ago so who knows how long this lot will last. I'm guessing for ever. The worse thing (I make it sound like we don't love these, but we do) is that the majority of the matchbook mother load are sans actual matches, which almost defeats the purpose of them for us.
We haven't even begun to scratch the surface yet of what we have here, and I suspect it may be quite an important collection that we may well move on at some stage, but until then I am going to look through them, do some research and enjoy the ones we can use.
I'll try to post updates and background history on the more unusual ones I come across.