2002 Match Safe Convention Guest Speakers

International Match Safe

Association and Museum

2002 Convention Speakers & Their Informative Presentations

This year the IMSA convention had a first - a guest speaker. Judy Redfield, co-editor of the latest Encyclopedia of American Silver Manufacturers, gave a talk and slide show entitled "Playing with Fire."

Club member Andy held a talk on the Romaine Trade Catalog Collection. A CD of images he produced pictures match holders found in that collection. It is available to club members for a $25.00 donation, plus shipping. Contact Andy D @ matchbookholder@aol.com to add a copy to your library.

Up next was club member Andreas, who spoke on how to identify Enameled Fakes. He had several examples of real and fake enameled match safes with him.

After lunch on the first day, club members got to hear a wonderful presentation by Michael about art nouveau designs on match safes. He published a hand-out (seen below) that explained the history and development of the art nouveau design style.

Convention host Dave then spoke about a local legacy... An organization called the Veiled Prophet was started by local, very wealthy businessmen in St. Louis in 1878. It was basically fashioned after the Mardi Gras. The match safe was produced for them as a gift to the male escorts for the wealthy businessmen's debutants.

In summary, every club member enjoyed the wide variety of presentations as it added to their knowledge base in their specific areas of collecting.