matches

Match

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: Sometimes it is easy to forget that the purview of Pictorama is a cat one, although frequently a predominantly black cat and a Felix one. Today’s item crossed my path on Instagram, being sold by an antique store in Texas (http://www.getcuriosities.com) and whose denizens have become friends who keep an eye out for Felix-y and other cat items for me. Although Jason hadn’t lined me up for it I don’t think he was surprised when I reached out. It was inexpensive and admittedly purchased on the fly while I should have been doing other things.

I like this little fellow. As far as I can tell he hung on a wall where he offered matches and I suspect that the bit under his chin was once a place you could strike said matches now gone. Such wall hanging holders for matches, for use and those which were spent, proliferated at a time before mine yet I am fond of them.

Kitty is made of light balsa type wood and has shiny eyes. His tail is where he hangs from and you can imagine that you are seeing a whole cat condensed into a front view, tail in the air behind him. While simple I think he was mass produced rather than homemade.

I wrote about this match holder in a 2020 post – I think it also came from the crew @Curiositiesantiques. Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.

Matches were a daily need when gas stoves required regular lighting this way and of course that was long before the current demonization of gas stoves. (Of all the hazards of exposure in my life I continue to throw caution to the wind and happily embrace my crisply roasted veggies and sautéed comestibles with gas stoves and ovens both here in New York and at the house in New Jersey. In Manhattan our building just completed a six month turn off of our gas in order to check the lines and it was recently, joyfully, reinstated. A post on preparing for that period of privation can be found here.) I imagine a certain amount of lighting cigarettes probably also went on and matches in a time before inexpensive and ubiquitous lighters were handy to have.

Decorative cat matches in the Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.

Wooden matches, the type that I imagine would have most likely lived in kitty, were of course the sturdy workhorse over the books of them that you carried if you didn’t carry a lighter. (Matchbooks can be delightful cat items as well and both posts on matchbook art and match safes can be found here and here.) I keep some in the house in case the gas does need re-lighting on the stove pilot light and because they are easily lit in general.

There’s something comforting about the fact that these boxes of wooden matches can still be purchased and are pretty much identical to the boxes I would have seen as a kid. There are special devices for lighting your stove, but I favor matches whether they are held by kitty or not.

Matching

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: I had to ferret around the apartment this morning as I had no post in mind having lost a number of auctions lately. (And later today I will be scribbling advance posts to keep you all in Pictorama while I travel to Denver on business next Saturday!) However, I reached deep into the Pictorama archive and pulled out this rather wonderful little gem. It was a gift years ago from Richard Greene, match collector extraordinaire, who had us as guests for a weekend at his home when Kim agreed to do a con in Philly at his request. Richard and his wife live in a house chock-a-block full of interesting bits and pieces he shared with us and they were the very most generous hosts.

Fellow cartoonist (the sadly now late) Jay Lynch was also there for the weekend and it was the only time I ever spent more than an evening with him. I forget the exact year, but it was summer and terribly hot like it is now. The con was in an old, wooden, un-air conditioned building and I remember spending the day stationed thoughtfully in front of a fan.

Richard gave Kim a hat he still wears (if I remember he did advertising lay out for a living) when not in the old Stetson I gave him, and Richard gave me this splendid matchbook from his glorious collection.

Front. Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.

Kernel Lew Mercur’s (Original) Nut Club is pretty darn interesting (and colorful!) in its own right. The back promises dinners, dancing, and laffs. Located in Miami Beach (Alton Road at Dade Blvd.) it was open all night. Cuisine by Delmonico is noted along the top fold. Mr. Mercur’s image, or what we offered as such, is on the front in top hat with a carnation and musical notes.

Verso. Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.

Not surprisingly, there are few tracks on Mr. (Kernal) Mercur or the Nut Club, although I did find a reference to it in a book about the bygone hey day of eating establishments of Miami (Lost Restaurants of Miami by Seth Bramson) and it would seem that the Nut Club was among a proliferation of Jewish cafeteria style restaurants and delis that became popular in Miami at the time. Bramson notes that Mercur did indeed preside over the restaurant in a top hat.

Other restaurants of the time (1940’s?) and place included The Five O’Clock Club (acquired by Martha Reye and which made it into the 1970’s) and Bill Jordan’s Bar of Music, an eponymous piano bar. Interesting that these establishments liked to label themselves as bars and clubs rather than restaurants or cafeterias. (And Cuisine by Delmonico doesn’t much scream Jewish deli to me either.)

Full inside view. Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.

For me of course it is all about the inside of this matchbook which reveals (voila!) the matches, lined up like a picket fence, emblazoned with a black Tom cat atop a fence with a favorite wheeze, Ya gotta make calls…if you want results, as the other black cat and kittens march below. Devoted and early Pictorama readers will remember a post I did devoted to a celluloid match safe with the same saying. (That post can be found here.) I used to have a postcard with the same image pinned up in my office at the Met.

Celluloid match safe. Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.

Not a spot on this matchbook goes undecorated and the inside cover goes on to assure the visitor, be entertained at the funniest and screwiest place outside an asylum, yes it’s Kernel Lew Mercur’s Nut Club. Never a cover charge! It gives the exact address (1827 Alton Boulevard) and a phone number (5-9952) for reservations tucked behind the matches. At the bottom it says, We’re Never Too Busy to Say Hello! Who wouldn’t want to go and nosh a knish? But most of all, who wouldn’t pocket these matches? So glad somebody did!

Felix Match

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: This item comes to us via Instagram and a lovely woman named Sandy who is one of the owners of a store in Dallas, Texas called Curiosities (@curiositiesantique or getcuriosities.com) and who reached out with a photo of this great Felix match holder which I had to have, well, immediately. We spoke on the phone and I had tucked a number of other items into my virtual cart before we were done – more on those in the weeks to come. Turns out Sandy is a fan of Kim’s work and follows the comings and goings of life here at Deitch Studio and knew that a piece like this Felix would be catnip to us at Pictorama – and she was right!

Decorated package from Curiosities

These off-model Felix pieces are like primitive art and it is hard to say if they were made from designs, maybe in magazines, or were just simply made items pounded out and sold, capitalizing on Felix’s appeal and flying under the radar of the copyright cops. Years ago I wrote about the East End of London shops which turned out some of my favorite gleefully free-form mohair Felix toys (almost assuredly not licensed) as a way of employing indigent women in the East End of London. (That post can be found here and is a favorite. I wrote about another such homemade piece, shown below, which can be found here.)

Another recent acquisition I wrote about back in August which smacks of being homemade from a blueprint or kit.

Matches played a bigger role in the world in early 20th century life than we may remember today, living now in a world of lighters and probably less of a need for them in general with less cigarette smoking and all. Among my prized possessions are two feline versions of what are known as “match safes” – these designed for keeping your matches dry and handy – and, in a word, safe. I have written posts on those two here and here. (Meanwhile, if you want to be entertained by the story of matches I suggest the 1932 pre-code film The Match King, based on a true story, which takes on the premise of getting rich, one match via manipulation and a monopoly on the match market.)

Pams-Pictorama.com collection
Pams-Pictorama.com collection

This Felix match holder feels like it was made commercially, if perhaps by a small enterprise. The wood is very light. I like the addition of this fang-y sort of gap tooth grin and the four decorative whiskers. The face looks as though it was sprayed on through a stencil of sorts. He has some wear on him and it would appear someone reached in for many matches over time, wearing the white paint of the cup away almost entirely. The place where he hung from a nail on top, is almost worn through – probably pulled a bit on the nail when matches were taken each time. It is my only hesitation about whether he hangs in the kitchen or remains with the toys in the other room.

Of course this object speaks to the day when stoves were lit with wooden matches every time they were used. The Apartment with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine was on yesterday and I overheard the snippet where he runs up the stairs in a panic because he smells gas and she has turned it on without realizing that it required manual lighting each time. It was a bit old fashioned even when that film was made in 1960, self-lighting gas stoves probably having been introduced into newer models as a safety measure, but older stoves not yet replaced.

While my ancient gas stoves in my first apartments were technically self-lighting, I can assure you that both my apartments in London and my first in New York frequently needed a prompt from a match to get going. In fact the immediate predecessor to my current stove had a pilot light that went out frequently enough that I have a box of wooden matches in the kitchen drawer right now – somehow using a lighter for that task never seemed entirely safe. Even if he hangs in the kitchen I will not tax him with holding onto our matches and it would be nice to bring a jolly touch of Felix into our kitchen.

Match safe – Ya Gotta Make Calls

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Pam Pictorama Post:  This match safe is a favorite and I have a postcard from the same era (side two drawing or at least a similar one) pinned above my desk at the office. Everything else aside, I believe it is true, Ya Gotta Make Calls if You Want Results!  I like to be reminded.

I missed the match safe era by several decades.  I gather the small box of wooden matches slipped in the middle – keeping them, well, safe I guess.  I have seen photos of match safes that held loose matches – some cat ones too although I don’t own any and the general theme seems to run more to dogs for some reason.  These are standing affairs of heavy metal which I imagine lived next to the stove. Many of the ones meant to be carried around are of silver and sometimes parts of sets.  Cigarette or cigar case and tools, and match safe.  The occasional cat there.

This match safe, the only celluloid cat one I have seen of this type – I’d have a whole collection if I could find them – was purchased on eBay a number of years ago. (Although this blog is having the effect of reminding me that I should go back to ferreting out this and that I haven’t looked for lately.  Just what I need – more stuff!)  Much to my surprise, it came from the collection of and was sold to me by Sally Cruickshank. She did not, ummm, acknowledge the Kim Deitch connection when the purchase was made, despite his name on the email.  Probably for the best. I guess it is a small world of cat collectibles. Anyway, this is on a shelf at the foot of our bed and I am very fond of it indeed. Now get out there and make some calls!