Four Thousand Matchbox Labels in Kandy
Pharmacist Ruwan Peiris keeps 4,000 matchbox labels in a back room above his shop. He explains how he stores them, the ones he still hunts, and what his daughter thinks.
How a Nine-Year-Old Starts a Lifelong Collection
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Show notes
How a Nine-Year-Old Starts a Lifelong Collection
The first episode is about beginnings. Nilanthi opens the album her uncle gave her in 1989, reads out what she wrote inside the cover at nine years old, and traces how stamps led to coins, then matchbox labels, then a career in a library archive.
- The first stamp, soaked off an envelope from Kuwait
- Why children collect and why adults stop
- Her first catalogue, written in pencil in a school exercise book
- The difference between keeping and collecting
She closes with three practical rules for anyone starting now: one box, one list, and never buy before you have sorted what you already have.
Transcript
Hello, and welcome to The Shoebox Archive. I am Nilanthi Jayawardena, I am a librarian in Colombo, and I am surrounded right now by about forty labelled boxes, which my family finds less charming than I do. This is a show about collecting, the small kind. Stamps, coins, matchbox labels, bus tickets, anything people keep in tins and drawers and wonder if anyone else does too. For the first episode I have the album my uncle, a postman, gave me in 1989 when I was nine. I will read you what I wrote inside the cover, tell you about the first stamp I ever soaked off an envelope from Kuwait, and explain how that habit became a catalogued archive and a career. At the end, three rules for starting. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.
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