Exhibits : Netherlands match industry, Nursery Land series
I was born in 1944 and started collecting matchbox labels on the 15th of August 1955. The reason was that a niece of mine had spent a holiday that year in Sweden. At that time you could get their labels of the Red Cross that were issued by Swedish Match. She showed me the labels she had bought and was so attracted that I started collecting. I went on the street the same day and found 35 boxes. I was very lucky that my father was also a collector and from day one he supported me.
The growth of my collection was very quick and gradually I started to also become interested in the history of matchmaking and their industry. This was backed by the fact that I was in my professional life a management consultant.
When I exhibited in 1971 a small part of my collection a famous Dutch collector offered me his collection. That year I bought it. He had a wonderful world-wide collection. It was so big that I decided to sell off all the labels with exception of the Dutch, Belgium, Swedish and Norwegian ones, and I sold the rest to Axel Winner. We remained friends for the rest of his life and bought together an enormous number of collections from all over the world.
Up to this day I work on my collection every day and still can learn a lot. The match industry is a very complicated one but gradually we all start to understand more and more about it.
What is sad is that we have lost so many fantastic collectors who laid the basis of what we know now. I am very lucky that I have known a lot of them, even ones who started collecting in the 1920’s.
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