Category: Ephemera

Our eyes lit up when we received this stunning array of matchbooks from Michael Burroughs this week. We’re always keen on discovering a new field of collecting so today’s specialist topic is…phillumeny!

A hobby which has existed for over a century, phillumeny is the practice of collecting match-related items, such as matchboxes, matchbooks, and matchbox labels. The word comes from the Greek “philos” (meaning “lover of”) and “lumen” (meaning “light”). The British Matchbox Label and Bookmatch Society is an admirable non-profit which produces a magazine, holds auctions and regular meetings.

The matchbooks were just another way in which all sorts of enterprises advertised themselves: banks, fast food chains (as with the early McDonalds example here), airlines, theatres, restaurants… the variety is immense. Some collectors won’t countenance anything which is less than mint so it’s always best to preserve them in as near perfect condition as possible – just like most collectables.

Among the more valuable are those issued to special forces in World War II. These would form part of an escape kit and would always light no matter how damp they were. Attracting particular interest at present are any examples from Hong Kong before it was taken over by China.

Certainly one of the most unusual items we’ve ever featured, this is a very rare bootleg recording of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Immigrant Song’.

Dating from a time in the seventies when Western music was banned behind in the Soviet Union, Russian fans would cut records into old X-ray plates. Hence they became known as ‘bone records’. Held up to the light, this one shows the image of a broken shoulder! The rough circular shape is because they were cut by hand and the hole in the middle was often made by a lit cigarette.

Usually, the value is determined by the condition of the record and whether it’s retained its original sleeve with Russian title.

A grim reminder of the horrors that war bring is this notice from 1940s London encouraging any pet owners being evacuated or mobilised for war work to euthanise their cats and dogs so they don’t starve in their absence.

It will seem horrific by modern standards but was no doubt regarded as a kindness almost a century ago. The cemetery at the address has an extensive plot for animals with some impressive statues and carvings.

With thanks to Michael Burroughs of Anything Militaria for the photo and background information.

Doug Larson described nostalgia as a “a device that removes the ruts and potholes from memory lane” and it’s often true that, almost without knowing it, our hands fumble for a pair of rose tinted spectacles whenever we look back to our childhood or adolescence. And it really doesn’t take much to transport us back across the decades to a time which seemed, and in fairness probably was, so much simpler.

Perhaps it’s the smell of a coal fire, the sound of a particular song or the taste of a favourite meal cooked ‘just right’. Or maybe it’s something as simple as a packet of Kellogg’s Sugar Ricicles, “twicicles as nicicles”. The bright commercial tapestry which formed the backdrop of our youthful lives is tinged with all sorts of bitter sweet emotions.

In 1963 one forward looking young man named Robert Opie began to collect contemporary packaging from all sorts of products. Things which were regarded as being of no consequence and routinely thrown away he would tuck away for posterity. In time, his collecting obsession grew to encompass bottles, signs, tickets, toys, games, postcards, comics and newspapers. Today the Robert Opie collection has a permanent home at the Museum of Brands in Central London and he has compiled a number of fascinating hardcover books stuffed full of visual memories of days gone by. Nostalgia like this is surely what A E Housman described as “the land of lost content…The happy highways where I went / And cannot come again.”

The art of letter writing may not be dead but it’s declined exponentially since the advent of email. So anyone’s efforts to communicate with others on paper are always of value. The letters of major literary and political figures are often collated and published for posterity but there will always be notes deemed too trivial to be worth our attention.

And here is a prime example just recently on sale at the market.

Field Marshall Sir Henry Evelyn Wood (1838-1919) was a distinguished British Army officer who won the Victoria Cross for rescuing a local merchant in India who had been ambushed by robbers and taken into the jungle to be hanged. He served in all the major hotspots in the British Empire, being made a Field Marshall in 1903.

Written on War Office stationery, the only date on this note is 5th May. It reads “My Dear Mr Chamberlain, I must, like Sir Charles Coldstream in ‘Used Up’ answer “There’s nothing in it”. Merci mille fois tout le même. [A thousand thanks all the same.] Yours Evelyn Wood”

‘Used Up’ was a comic play co-authored by Charles Dickens and Charles Matthews. The dramatic high water mark of the latter was his role as Sir Charles Coldstream in that very play. Although it is tempting to believe that this was in reply to an enquiry by future PM Neville Chamberlain, their chronology does not really overlap. It is far more likely that the intended recipient was Neville’s father, Joseph, who was Secretary of State for the Colonies from June 1895 to September 1903.

From a distance of over a hundred years, we have no way of knowing what the original question was. But it’s fun to guess. There’s “nothing” in what exactly…? Rumours of war with another country? A spat between the army top brass? Calls for independence in one of the colonies? Or something much more mundane like the War Office tea fund?