Matchsafes

$13.00 at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

The collections of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, comprise a unique history of design. The department of Applied Arts and Industrial Design is home to more than 30,000 three-dimensional objects, well over 4,000 of which comprise a rare and extraordinary collection the most unusual of these items. Match safes (or Vesta cases) were designed to keep friction matches safe and dry at a time when they were as vital for lighting kitchen stoves as they were for lighting gentlemen's cigars…