Swan Vesta
Swan Vestas is a brand name for the most popular brand of 'strike-anywhere' matches currently available in the UK, shorter than regular pocket matches they are particularly popular with smokers and have long used the tagline "the smoker's match" although this has been replaced by the prefix "the original" on the current packaging.
Swan Vesta matches are manufactured under the House of Swan brand, which is also responsible for making other smoking accessories such as cigarette papers, flints and filter tips. The matches are manufactured by Swedish Match in Sweden using local, sustainably grown aspen.[1]
History of the brand
The Swan brand began in 1883 when the Collard & Kendall match company in Bootle on Merseyside near Liverpool introduced 'Swan wax matches' these were superseded by later versions including 'Swan White Pine Vestas' from the Diamond Match Company, these were formed of wooden splint soaked in wax. They were finally christened 'Swan Vestas' in 1906 when Diamond merged with Bryant and May and the company enthusiastically promoted the Swan brand. By the 1930s 'Swan Vestas' had become 'Britain's best selling match'. The brand is now owned by the Swedish Match company.
In popular culture
An immediately recognizable Swan Vesta box appears in the first Wallace and Gromit animation A Grand Day Out, thinly disguised as "Duck Matches". The homage recurs in the fourth Wallace and Gromit short, A Matter of Loaf and Death. They are also mentioned in Mark Z. Danielewski'sHouse of Leaves on p. 466 as a personal item Navidson decides to bring with him into the house.
"Vestas", without the capital, appear in the Sherlock Holmes story Silver Blaze, and finding a half-burned one is one of the clues that helps solve the crime. They also appear in the story The Man with the Twisted Lip, as the professional beggar Hugh Boone pretends "a small trade in wax vestas" to avoid the police. In both of these stories, "vesta" appears to be used as a generic term for "match". The discovery of "an odd vesta or two" made it possible for Richard Hannay to escape confinement in John Buchan's novel "The Thirty-Nine Steps."
Swan Vesta matches are also used as an instrument in the off-Broadway and touring productions of Stomp, with the actors alternating between shaking and striking full boxes of matches - with the striker heads removed - to create a musical number.[2]
Picturesque Matchstickable Messages from the Status Quo, the 1968 debut album by the British psychedelic rock group The Status Quo, features the band members seated atop a mountain of Swan Vesta matches.
In an episode of Only Fools and Horses, Derek Trotter compares Rodney Trotter to a Swan Vesta after he is deliberately burned under a sun bed.
References
- Jones, Ben (text). "The evolution of and the influences on the graphical design of Matchboxes" (PDF).
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires|journal=(help) - BBCi, Matches: a story of light and dark
- Childs, Peter E. Phosphorus: from urine to fire, Part 2. From cold fire to instant lights - the history of the match. University of Limerick, Limerick