Examples of Aaron Kasmin’s matchbook-inspired artworks

IT was at a car boot sale in France in 2012 that a spark was lit for artist Aaron Kasmin.

His daughter had happened upon some beautiful vintage feature matchbooks and knowing her father’s taste, and love of collecting, she showed them to him.

Called feature matchbooks because the images are printed on each match, Aaron was charmed and bought a couple. This fledgling collection was then boosted when his wife bought him another 35 as a gift.

He found more of these exquisite little works of art on American eBay. And so began his collecting habit – in the past he has collected the likes of tribal art and fossils. To date he has about 500 matchbooks, their joyful, vivid echoes of a long-past era inspiring him and his art.

His latest exhibition, aptly titled Strike A Light, is at Sims Reed Gallery in Mayfair, and has 30 new large-scale pencil works on display paying homage to this glamorous bygone age.

Originally mass-produced from the 1920s for advertising purposes, the matchbook became a hugely effective medium promoting the likes of nightclubs, magazines, hotels and a plethora of other services and commodities in an often unique and playful way.

“They were so inventive – one uses the match tip as the brushes of paintbrushes, another uses them as the lipstick tip for a rather stylish packet of Vogue matches,” says Aaron who lives in Kilburn.

“People just came up with really genius ideas. There would have been an art department, which I say must have been a bit like [the TV series] Mad Men but with people doing a smaller job.

“The real genius is they put images on each match. People wanted to keep them. People took them home.”

It is an era that very much appeals to Aaron.

“I just loved that world, the billboards of the 1930s and the glamour of Scott Fitzgerald and Raymond Chandler, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and Cole Porter.”

It’s thought there were more than 100 companies in America alone making these matchbooks with their heyday lasting until the 1950s or thereabouts.

The onset of the Second World War as well as the prevalence of the lighter steadily killed off this once-booming industry.

Today, this ephemera offers a snapshot of cultural and social history and a glimpse into the rise of consumer culture.

“They made maybe one per cent of them in England and the rest in America as far as I can make out,” says Aaron. “The English ones are incredibly rare.”

A really rare feature matchbook might sell for £130, he says. But most are around the £10 mark.

It was the chance remark of a woman who had seen the matchbooks that pushed Aaron to start drawing them.

“This lady in a gallery, who was half American herself, said, ‘these are really fantastic. Why don’t you do something with them?’ So it was her idea. That made me draw them. And since then, this is my fifth show of them. And I do them every two years, roughly.”

As well as these pencil chalk drawings, he loves to include his collection of matchbooks in the exhibitions. They are on show in a glass-topped cabinet which displays about 100.

His admiration for the artists and minds that created them is clear. Keen to find out more, he tried to trace them but to no avail.

“English people have never seen them and I found American people haven’t seen them either. So it is this funny little world that has disappeared.

“I think people are pleased I’m bringing them to life. It’s tapping into nostalgia. They’re about pleasure and joy.”

• Aaron Kasmin: Strike a Light runs until July 29 at Sims Reed Gallery, 43A Duke Street, SW1Y  6DD. Details at www.gallery.simsreed.com