By Hunter Oatman-Stanford — It only takes a few inches of paper to conjure entire worlds: A hike in the Polish countryside; a smoke-filled Japanese jazz club; or an astronaut's view of a Russian space station. Each of these tantalizing scenes once adorned the sides of ordinary matchboxes, deftly illustrated with a few simple shapes and bright colors. Though often overlooked, vintage matchbox labels are treasures of modern design, thanks to the skills of anonymous artists who created these elegant ads that fit in the...

Where There's Smoke There's a Vintage Cigarette Lighter

By Maribeth Keane — At the very beginning, my interest in lighters was about the mechanism. I had my first lighter when I was 14. I saved up my nickels and dimes. I grew up in Oakland, and bought my first cigarette lighter because I thought it was way cool. I didn’t smoke and I didn’t set fire to things. I just thought the lighter was really a beautiful piece of equipment and the whole idea of being able to push down your thumb and get a flame just really caught my fancy. I was attracted to the function of...

Collecting Vintage Cigarette Lighters

By Eric Beeson — Cigarette lighter collecting is a hobby that never gets boring. Just by browsing eBay auctions for ten minutes, for example, I recently found a lighter shaped like a lion’s head, one made of jade and gold, and an electric lighter in the shape of a woman’s face that hangs on the wall. A flame we can carry in our pockets is something that we take for granted, but it was much harder to make fire in earlier times. The match wasn’t invented until about 1805, and early matches were expensive...