How a Nine-Year-Old Starts a Lifelong Collection
Nilanthi tells the story of her first album, a gift from a postman uncle in 1989, and explains how a childhood habit became a catalogued archive of Ceylon postal history.
Four Thousand Matchbox Labels in Kandy
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Show notes
Four Thousand Matchbox Labels in Kandy
Ruwan Peiris has collected matchbox labels since 1978. Nilanthi visits the room above his pharmacy in Kandy where they are kept in biscuit tins and acid-free sleeves, and asks the questions collectors ask each other: how do you store them, what are you still looking for, and who gets them when you are gone.
- Labels from Ceylon match factories that closed in the 1970s
- Soaking, pressing and sleeving without damage
- Swapping by post with collectors in Finland and Japan
- The one label he has chased for 30 years
Ruwan's daughter joins for the last ten minutes and has strong opinions about the biscuit tins.
Transcript
Hello again, Nilanthi Jayawardena here, and this is The Shoebox Archive. Today I have taken the train up to Kandy to sit in a small room above a pharmacy with Ruwan Peiris, who has collected matchbox labels since 1978 and now has about 4,000 of them in biscuit tins and proper sleeves. Ruwan has labels from Ceylon match factories that closed before I was born, pen friends in Finland and Japan who still swap with him by post, and one particular label he has chased for 30 years without success. We will talk about how he soaks and presses and stores them, why matchbox labels and not stamps, and who gets the tins one day. His daughter has agreed to join us at the end, and she has opinions. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.
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