Our first On-line Phillumeny Exhibition opened its doors at 09:00 UK time on 1st October and runs for the entire month. It is jam-packed full of beautiful, exciting Exhibits from all over the world showing the full breadth of our hobby. Visit the Exhibition here.
Our third On-line Phillumeny Exhibition opened its doors at 07:00 UK time on 1st October and runs for the entire month. It is jam-packed full of beautiful, exciting Exhibits from all over the world showing the full breadth of our hobby. Visit the Exhibition here.
Our first On-line Phillumeny Exhibition ran from 1st October to 31st October 2021 and was an unqualified success, attracting over 2000 visitors during the month. We had over 40 exciting Exhibits from members across the world, covering the whole breadth of our hobbyon topics such as murder, fire, railways, tigers, postcards, and mandolins, and including a huge amount of never-before-seen material. The Award winners will be announced shortly and will go into a Permanent Gallery on our web site.
We have already started preparing for next year’s Exhibition, which will again take place in October.
Here is our Exhibition Catalogue. The Exhibits are listed in alphabetical order, click on a link below to access an Exhibit or read an Exhibitor’s biography. An asterisk indicates that the Exhibit is available in dual language.
Enjoy our Exhibition, and we encourage you to sign our Visitor Book and let us know what you think and don’t forget to vote for your favourite Exhibit.
Following our successful 2021 On-line Phillumeny Exhibition, the three Award winners have now been announced and their Exhibits can be seen in our Permanent Gallery.
The Award winners are :
The President’s Award winner is “The Tigers of Malaya” by Badrul Hisham Jaafar
The Members’ Award winner is “Murder on Fuencarral Street” by Jesús María Bollo García
The Committee’s Award winner is “Hi-no-Yojin” by Takeshi Yokomizo
Bryant & May’s winter competition runs until 17th January 2022. It is being held to celebrate the launch of their new winter packaging, and the company is giving people the chance to win a winter bundle worth up to £200 – they will give the winner a selection of hampers to choose from.
To enter the competition, people should submit their best photo of the new B&M packaging. Full details and an entry form can be found here on their website.
Cheshire Stamp Auctions will be selling a very small portion of Robin Hunt’s ephemera and memorabilia collection on 12th February 2022. The listings will become available here on their website towards the end of January. The items being auctioned include a sizeable collection of Royalty-based philately, and an extensive accumulation of Royalty-themed matchbox labels, with some very strong representation from the reigns of Victoria and Edward VII onwards.
This year’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) will take place on Sunday 10th April during the Society Meeting in London. The agenda will be published in the April magazine, and members are invited to vote on the Resolutions.
This year’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) will take place on Sunday 10th April during the Society Meeting in London. The agenda will be published in the April magazine, and members are invited to vote on the Resolutions.
If you want to make a postal vote on this year’s AGM Resolutions then click here
If you are unable to attend the Meeting but would like to join using Zoom the please contact us here
The Swiss Match Museum is organizing for the second time an international online exhibition about phillumeny. There are great prizes to be won. Participation is free and possible immediately.
The motif this year is: cars and trucks. The exhibition starts on June 1st and ends on June 30th, 2022.
The Swiss Match Museum is organizing it’s third international online exhibition about phillumeny. There are great prizes to be won. Participation is free and entries are needed by 20th May.
The motif this year is: airplanes and rail vehicles. The exhibition starts on June 1st and ends on June 30th 2024.
The Swiss Match Museum is organizing for the second time an international online exhibition about phillumeny. There are great prizes to be won. Participation is free and possible immediately.
The motif this year is: flowers. The exhibition starts on June 1st and ends on June 30th 2023.
A new book has just been published called Striking! Advertising Matches from Singapore which can be purchased here.
With its rectangular and pocket-friendly form, matchboxes plastered with advertisements once offered an affordable and portable means of marketing for restaurants, hotels and other businesses. This collection of over 350 covers from Singapore—each reproduced true to size—captures the city-state’s colourful modernisation during the 1970s to 1990s. An accompanying essay on the history of matchbox production in Singapore along with seven curated themes reveals the many meanings and cultures emblazoned on each design.
A full review will be published in our August magazine.
I collect objects and information related to specific areas of interest, where innovation in fire making is concerned. After fifty years being engaged with the subject, in a very broad sense, my focus has settled on innovations created during the age of enlightenment, and until the beginning of the twentieth century.
Some of my lighters
My collection has evolved as knowledge and opportunities emerged. Information and new examples have connected enough evidence to say that a better understanding of the industry that developed and what impacts took place, as a result.
Boxes of matches used to be a familiar printed matter and were regarded fondly by people. But as a throw-away object, their life tends to be short. I embrace their fate and continue to collect them as a record of our everyday life.
Japan export to Europe, Meiji – Taisho era, 37 x 56 mm
I have been collecting for 30 years (labels and skillets 50,000+).
My collection mainly focuses on Japanese labels for export matchboxes in the Meiji – Taisho era (1868 – 1926).
I am also interested in Japanese advertisement matchboxes used for pro-war propaganda produced just before Japan’s defeat in WWII.
Some of these labels are shown in the gallery below, click on an image to enlarge it.
This exhibit is dedicated to the match labels of a famous entrepreneur and industrialist who is one of the founding fathers of Pakistan: Sir Adamjee Haji Dawood (1880-1948).
Born in 1880 in Jetpur, Gujrat, British India of a Memon community, Sir Adamjee began his entrepreneurial venture very early in life when he was just a teenager. His real name is Adam Dawood Baig Mohammad. He was fondly called Adamjee by his mother where the suffix ‘jee’, sometimes spelled ‘ji’, denotes special affection in Gujarati family. He went to Burma (now Myanmar) in 1895 at a tender age of 15 to work as an apprentice. By the age of 18, he had begun operating his own business. In 1914, his company, Adamjee Dawood & Co was established and traded items such as rice, jute, and matches amongst others. In 1920 he built his own match factory in Rangoon which began match production by December of 1923.
This is a story of rags to riches, of mercantile to conglomerate, of a commoner to a national hero. Such a story deserves to be told and retold. As such, this exhibit intends to share part of his legacy by focusing on the match labels, a trade Sir Adamjee started off, amongst many of his joyous and arduous journey as an entrepreneur, a social visionary and philanthropist. Sir Adamjee was knighted in 1938 by the British Government due to his immense contribution to society such as his active involvement in flood relief activities and education related ventures amongst many others in British India.
The Trading Years, 1914 to 1924*
Imported brands of Adamjee’s matches from Japan.
Imported animal themed brands 1
Imported animal themed brands 2
Imported non-animal themed brands
Adamjee’s match factory
Adamjee’s match factory was reputed to be amongst the largest in Asia of its time, located in Pazundaung, Rangoon (Yangon) hired 1,400 employees mostly consist of Burmese women. His industrialization dream bears witness to a successful match manufacturing venture using German and Japan made machines. The business survived various episodes of hardship particularly the famous match trade war between Adamjee and the “match king” Ivar Kreuger of Swedish Match Company (SMC) who owned nearly 75 percent of world match trade at the time. It also survived the 1938 bloody riots of Burma and the 1942 Second World War. However, the factory was subsequently nationalized by the Burmese state in 1968.
The Manufacturing Years, 1923 to 1968*
Manufactured brands of Adamjee’s match labels from Burma (Myanmar). It was reported that Adamjee had over 2 dozen match label brand names manufactured out of his factory in Rangoon.
Animal themed brands
Cat and cow brands
Violin brand
Scissors brand
Assorted themes 1
Assorted themes 2
Please note that this is non-exhaustive of all brands traded and manufactured by Adamjee. It has taken me several years to accumulate these prized labels from all over the world and the hunt for other Adamjee’s match labels continues. Amongst those not available in this collection include Adamjee’s tiger, monkey, key, automobile, bullock cart brands and various varieties to name a few.
These labels now bear witness to the legacy of a business conglomerate, the Adamjee Group and the man himself for his contribution in the early formative days of Pakistan as a country. A successful entrepreneur extraordinaire, Sir Adamjee is remembered as a person who helped fund the newly created Pakistan by providing “a blank cheque” secured by his personal assets during Pakistan’s critical formative years.
This is a tribute towards a personality who not only made a name in match trading and match manufacturing in Asia but also towards humanity, industrialization and social development. Sir Adamjee, a commoner turned national hero born out of a match industry.
Notes & References:
* denotes estimated years.
All information is duly obtained from exhibitor’s personal reading of related information referred to and obtained from :
I) “Colonial Burma, history and phillumeny” by Andrew Selth, 24thMay, 2016 published in the New Mandala, (www.mandala.org)
ii) “The Merchant Knight – Adamjee Haji Dawood”, by Daleara Jamasji-Hirjikaka & Yasmin Qureshi, Adamjee Foundation, 2004.
iii) “Adamjee Haji Dawood” on wikipedia.com
Matchboxes caught my attention when I was 11 years old. I started the collection imitating a cousin. At first it was a game and an excuse to escape from the family farm to explore the shops and tobacco shop.
Casque d’or label, 50 x 35 mm
Exploring the attics didn’t turn out, but I found “Casque d’or” box, dated mid-1920s, in a drawer at my grandparents’ house, a treasure for me at this time !
The virus for good infected me in 1994, at random from a newsstand, when I discovered the existence of L’Association Vitolphilique et Philumenique Francaise (AVPF) through a classified ad from a collector in a specialized newspaper. I was then 22 years old and began to search for old boxes.
I immediately made the choice to limit my collection to complete French boxes and to go back as closely as possible to the origins of this everyday object. My oldest box is from the end of the 1830s.
From before 1950 I have about 3500 complete boxes including 1000 from before the monopoly established in 1872. Over time I have also collected labels, especially for advertising boxes from the 1920s / 1930s some of which are very rare. Since 2008 I have been in charge of writing the magazine of AVPF and since 2011 chairman of the AVPF.