Match made in heaven
Some people collect stamps, others collect records or books, and still more obsessive individuals collect matchbooks and matchboxes. It may seem like an unrewarding pastime, but the simple artwork on these mid-20th-century matchboxes from around Europe reveals a charming and modest elegance in advertising from only a few decades ago. How things have changed since then.
Left to right from top:
“Dining and sleeping coach – comfort while travelling”
(Czechoslovakia)
Smoking Cat
(Poland)
“Csepel iron and metal refinery”
(Hungary)
“Go sightseeing at the zoo”
(Poland)
“Shoe museum – after 1945″
(Czechoslovakia)
“Avoid child injuries!”
(Czechoslovakia)
Baker Street advertisement
(UK)
“Sausages taste better outside – North Moravian Meat Industry”
(Czechoslovakia)
“Get more light in your flat with Tungsram bulbs”
(Hungary)
2 January 1959: USSR launches Mechta (Luna 1) for first lunar fly-by
(USSR)
“Poppy heads are the foreign currency, do not destroy poppy heads”
(Poland)
“Good from Edeka”
(Germany)
