Matchsafes

The collections of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, in New York comprise a unique history of design.

The department of Applied Arts and Industrial design is home to more than 30,000 three-dimensional objects, well over 4,000 of which comprise a rare and extraordinary collection of matchsafes.

A selection of the most significant and unusual of these items forms the subject of Matchsafes (Vesta cases).

These were designed to keep friction matches safe and dry at a time when they were as vital for lighting kitchen stoves as they were for lighting gentlemen's cigars.

In this book, Deborah Sampson Shinn history of these compact metal containers in America, Britain, Europe, and Japan from the 1850s up to the 1910s, when cheap matchbooks and petrol lighters heralded the matchsafe's decline.