I like matches. To be precise, I like matchboxes. What I love the most isn’t the boxes, though, but the match books. My favorite kind are what’s called “feature matches.” For the phillumenists of the world, who are at a disadvantage in this thoroughly smoke-free (and vape-centric) era, these artifacts evoke the greatest romance.

Feature matches were patented in the early 1930s by the Lion Match Company of the United States, and were flat-lined, wide-stemmed matches with original advertising artwork printed on the match stems them selves. The novel idea was widely copied, and all kinds of advertising matches were produced through the 1940s. The variety of designs was tremendous. Some matches had a single illustration across the stems, while others had individual bowling pins, beer bottles, or other shapes printed on each matchstick.

Due to what was later viewed as poor cost performance, feature matches mostly disappeared after the 1950s, but there are still a small number of entities who produce them to this day! Among them is the website “Feature Matchbooks,” where newly designed, original feature matches are sold and vintage items are auctioned off. The survival of these items hints at why these matches didn’t work so well as advertising; they were so beautiful that people stashed them away instead of using them. (Reprinted from Subsequence vol.7)

Feature Matchbooks
https://featurematchbooks.com/

Keiko Sude/Born in Berlin and raised in Nagano Prefecture, Japan, Keiko is a country girl with a love for home gardening and vintage synthesizers. Her favorite food is mochi.