Vintage Matchboxes
Loving these vintage matchbox covers!!
I found this dealer at the LA Mart last month who sells all kinds of vintage papers, and I seriously could have rifled through their stuff for hours.
The simple illustration with three colors was a brilliant time in advertising and packaging.
This one above is particularly interesting… It reminds me of Russian Constructivist art, which would make sense, as Constructivists in the 1920s, after a small degree of capitalism was introduced, began producing ads for companies in addition to working on political posters. (I think it’s actually Polish on the box, but that would still make sense.) Later, Constructivist designs would inspire famous graphic designers in the West.
(A Constructivist book cover – bold colors and fonts, geometric, )
Pretty fascinating that through this box, the country’s current art movement is reflected in a commercial object, as this also speaks to what was going on in art in the world at the time. For the first time, the current avant-garde “high art” (fine art) movements had begun experimenting with “low art” (kitsch, mass produced commercial products) through Surrealism, Dada, Cubism, which would shortly be followed up by the Bauhaus’s true extension of art into industry through product design. Later, the whole debate about the place of high art and low art would be explored through Pop Artists like Andy Warhol.
The dealer, Style de Vie, here.
