What to do with my beloved matchboxes?

October 25, 2007 12:05 PM

What could I do with my collection of Indian matchboxes? Bonus: is it illegal to sell something I make out of them?

I spent six months in India and collected matchboxes the whole time. Old-school matchboxes are ubiquitous there, and come in many colorful and quirky designs. I'm back in the US now, and recently I've been scanning them and putting them on flickr, but I want to do something more with them, because they delight me so damn much. Something to make good use of their awesomeness. I just don't know what, exactly, so I thought I'd see if anyone has any ideas.

I'm also wondering: if I were to, say, make some greeting cards out of the scanned matchbox designs, would I be violating the copyright or trademark or whatever of the matchbox company? Not that I expect to be making money here, and not that I expect a matchbox company halfway around the world to give a fuck, but I'm curious.

posted by bookish to grab bag (8 comments total)

You could scan and compile these images (a la this or this), or you could give them away as prizes at parties, or you could scan and print them out to use for decopage (sp?), or you could scan and print them larger for use as framed art (that one gets my strongest vote), or you could just leave them on your dresser and admire them for the beautiful things that they are. Thanks for the FLICKR link, BTW.
posted by Pecinpah at 12:15 PM on October 25, 2007

On Ultrabrown I recently read about two books that catalog Indian matchbook covers. One of them was somewhat searchable online and had "copyrighted material" printed on each page, but maybe thumbing through actual copies of these books would give info on what kind of permissions (if any) were sought from the companies.

As for your first question, browsing through your flickr stream and comments is fun. Perhaps you could make your own sort of online matchbox museum?
posted by PY at 12:21 PM on October 25, 2007

I just want to say that I really enjoyed looking through your collection of matchboxes. Maybe you could mount them and frame the whole thing, just like you have it arranged in the big shot on your flickr page. I would love to have something interesting like that hanging on a wall, and by having it behind glass, you'd keep them looking fresh. Thanks for sharing this!
posted by Kangaroo at 12:42 PM on October 25, 2007

Seconding Kangaroo, that would look so cool.
But then I'm a sucker for big colourful things...
posted by ClarissaWAM at 2:02 PM on October 25, 2007

Oooh, thanks Pecinpah and Ultrabrown for the links to other matchbook collections! These little things are so wonderful... I'm really glad to see Indian matchboxes, in particular, are getting some props.

Kangaroo-- I originally thought, when I was collecting them, that I would mount the actual matchboxes on my wall somehow, like you suggest. But the boxes are in various stages of torn up and flattened, and I'm not sure how consistent it would look. I like how the scanned images are more smoothed out and neat, while still showing the wrinkles and stains.

I also don't know how the boxes will hold up over time. Cheap cardboard, cheap ink, and assorted varieties of dirt and grime doesn't make for archival longevity. But I don't know very much about preservation of this sort of thing, so if anybody has any imput there...
posted by bookish at 3:08 PM on October 25, 2007

you could send them to me! i also have a collection of indian matchboxes, but it's far far far too small...

i doubt you'd get into much trouble with copyright violations. the match companies seem to be pretty tiny, regional factories. if you sold tshirts at your local hipster market, they'd have about zero chance of finding out about it, and even less of tracking you down.

india, on the whole, is a massive copyright-infringing country, too. most bollywood soundtracks sold are bootlegs, for example. an example closer to home is that the design of Shehnai brand matchboxes is almost identical to Key brand.

ps - you don't have "Cheetah Fight!"? (shows a peasant with a sickle fighting off a cheetah)
posted by UbuRoivas at 6:24 PM on October 25, 2007

(not my photo but Cheeta (sic) Fight is in there...)
posted by UbuRoivas at 6:33 PM on October 25, 2007

(oh, and Shri Shiv totally infringes on the design of Ship brand matches, or vice versa)
posted by UbuRoivas at 9:48 PM on October 25, 2007