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International Match Safe

Association and Museum

The Pillar Post Match Box

by Chris Russell

IMSA Newsletter, Volume 3, Issue 2, April 2001

In August of 2000 I find myself in Baltimore Convention Center waiting to go into an antique fair. Also in line are Andreas Roubian, George Sparacio and John Antonelli. Whilst we wait for the door to open we talk about our recent finds and several items are exchanged.

In the fair we go our separate ways as we have different interests. After a while I find a cabinet with a large Bryant and May Post Office tin with calendar. I know only two other copies of this so am pleased to buy it for $400.

That is the happy part of the tale. Now we come to the other bit. About three weeks later I took a friend who was visiting us to Opie’s Museum of Memories in Wigan. (This is a museum of domestic items through the 20th century.) In a cabinet was a range of metal post office boxes - and amongst them a copy of Bryant and May’s Post Office tin with calendar, being one of the two that I knew about. BUT it was different. The postal rates were different and it was ER [King Edward VII] rather than the VR [Queen Victoria] mine was. Post-1901, rather than pre-1901. Anyway there is another $400 available for a copy with ER on it.

Top: Photo of front and back. Back shows Registration number. Item is about 5” tall. Bottom: Fig. 141 from Design Registrations by Stan Aston, a private publication based on notes in the Newsletter of the British Matchbox Label and Booklet Society produced by Denis Alsford in 1993.

In Design Registrations, Stan Aston wrote:

88121 of 26 November 1887 (Fig. 141) was registered “for the shape and pattern of a combined match box and calendar”. Under a heading: ‘The pillar post match box’ [sic], the journal TOBACCO for 2 April 1888 wrote: “there is one all-important feature about this box - you can’t help seeing it! It is not a waistcoat-pocket box, but a box for the mantel. At the foot of the box is an ingenious arrangement which serves as a perpetual date-remembrancer. On a tablet in the centre the letter and parcel rates are given. The top knob is adapted to hold a match for sealing purposes. We think tobacconists would find this a selling shilling article.”