Striking Images: Vintage Matchbook Cover Art

by Monte Beauchamp (Editor)

From the 1920s to the 1950s, a small but useful advertising gimmick spread like wildfire into the purses, pockets, and kitchen drawers of millions of Americans. The give-away matchbook was one of the most pervasive means ever found of putting promotional images into the hands of the public. Small and disposable, matchbooks were not only a highly successful marketing tool for a wide variety of products, they were also the repositories for a wealth of anonymous design creativity. Fantasies of ocean travel, bathing beauties, regal leisure, and tropical locales adorned the covers, as did hand-lettered typography, stylized illustration, and eye-catching color. This red-hot celebration brings the ubiquitous matchbook's art to life in all its pulp panache and visual zing.

272 pages, Paperback

First published April 27, 2006

Reviews

[Jon Nakapalau]

Matchbooks were one of the first ways a business could advertise service. This book takes us through the history of this almost forgotten form of product placement. It is amazing how images get appropriated and then are passed on to society; there seems to me to be lessons we can still learn from older forms of advertising.

[Jose]

Lots of Cool images.Alot of vintage Match work images. No reading,Just images, but Cool Layout.

[Shirley Holler]

Awesome little book, wish they still made matchbooks