08/08/2026
🔥 Matches! 🔥
New from Jolliff & Son Mercantile, these small wooden match containers are copied from examples recovered from the Steamboat Arabia, which sank in the Missouri River near Kansas City on September 5, 1856.
By the mid-19th century, friction matches had transformed the everyday act of making a fire. In its November 6, 1852 issue, Scientific American described the lucifer friction match as a major improvement over earlier methods of flint, steel, tinder, and chemical match bottles, noting that matches had already become an indispensable household item.
Just a few years after the Arabia sank, Scientific American published another detailed article on December 22, 1860, describing the enormous scale of American match production. The article estimated that approximately 35.7 million matches were being manufactured in the United States each day.
Most interesting for these little containers, the article specifically noted that large quantities of wood were being consumed not only for match splints, but also for the small cylindrical boxes in which matches were transported.
That description closely matches the small round wooden match packages recovered from the Arabia.
The Arabia was carrying new merchandise intended for stores and settlements along the Missouri River. When her remarkably preserved cargo was recovered more than a century later, objects like these provided an extraordinary glimpse at the small, everyday goods that would have sat on a mercantile shelf in 1856.
Our version recreates that wonderfully simple object: a small wooden container holding a handful of matches, patterned after the examples recovered from the Steamboat Arabia.
Copied from an 1856 original.
Sources:
Scientific American, “Matches,” November 6, 1852, Vol. 8, No. 8, p. 64.
Scientific American, “Friction Matches,” December 22, 1860, Vol. 3, No. 26, p. 402.
These will be $6 empty for mailing out and likely $8 at events filled with strike anywhere matches.
