About the collection: Artist Bruce Stuart's collection includes more than 7,000 matchbook covers and is divided into Bermuda covers and other covers from around the world. They come in different sizes - 10s (with 10 matches), 20s, 30s and 40s -although Stuart also has a 16-inch long Bermuda souvenir matchbook with about 200 matches and other unusually shaped match book covers.

The Bermuda section includes covers mostly from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, although Stuart believes his oldest Bermuda matchbook covers, from Coral Beach Club and Elbow Beach, are from the early 1930s.

Stuart says almost every establishment and organisation offered matches. "I guess at that time, everybody smoked and it was good advertising,'' he says, adding that even the Women's Hospital Auxiliary had books of matches with their name on them.

His Bermuda matchbook covers are divided into hotels, including all the major hotels as well as the Belmont Manor & Golf Club, Pink Beach, Coral Island, the old Inverurie, Harmony Hall, the Bermudiana, the Windsor Hotel and Palm Gardens (now Windsor Place), Holiday Inn, the St. George Hotel, Loews Bermuda Beach Hotel, Ariel Sands, the Hamiltonian - also the Eagle's Nest, and the Sherwood Manor. Also, restaurants, bars and clubs, including the Empire Club, the Barracuda Bar, the Longtail Club on Front Street, located "opposite the Queen's (Queen of Bermuda) sundeck'', the Pirate's Den, the Blue Marlin bar and restaurant in St. David's, the Harbourfront, Hoppin John, which is now Rum Runners, the Breakers Beach Club, which used to be at John Smith's Bay, the Ace of Clubs, the Crown and Anchor, which is now the Wharf Tavern, the Guinea Discotheque, and the Goody Shoppe, described as "an eating place of refinement'' and "an eating place of international fame''.

Other sections include covers from airlines, including Pan American Airways, shops including Calypso, the English Sports Shop, the Shirt Shop in Paget, the Viking, which was a Scandinavian shop, and hairdressers including Salon Angel.

Grocers also offered matches including Piggly Wiggly, and the Palm Grocery which also had a grocery checklist on the back. Almost all the liquor stores provided matches, and so too did the Island's banks.

How it started: Stuart has been collecting for about 30 years. "I started when I was about 10. I used to walk from my parents' house in Fairylands to my granny's in Paget. Like any typical little boy, I would pick up every bit of junk from the road along the way. Even then I liked small images. It started with matchbook covers, and it stuck with me all my life. It was a neat way of collecting graphic images but on a very tiny scale.'' When Stuart was about 12, a friend of his father's was leaving Bermuda and gave him a bag full of matchbook covers that he had collected. "That really pushed me further into collecting. From then, I had everybody collecting for me including my brothers' friends who would even pick up covers for me when they were travelling. They would not only bring me the covers, they all had stories about how they got the covers too. At last count - and that was several years ago - I had about 7,000, but thatis considered a small collection.'' Stuart has added to his collection by picking up covers at flea markets, and antique shops. In the early 1980s, while visiting a friend in Milton, Connecticut, he bought 50 Bermuda covers for $23. "He had about five million.'' Value: "I'm not sure about the value. Most of my covers have been given to me. I haven't paid for them. I suppose if you say that each matchbook cover is $1, and then some of the older ones about $3 or $4, then the whole thing would be worth about $10,000. I do it for the fun of it and it shows you some of the changes that have taken place around Bermuda. The real collectors will only take covers in pristine condition - I take most of the ones I can get. '' Above Left, 1960's Ace of Clubs matchbook cover, centre, 1960s cover from Frith Liquors and the Pirate's Den at the Coral Island Club, right, a book of 36 matches from the Belmont Manor Hoatel and Golf Club and Cottages, 1950's.

Above, Pan Am matchbook covers introducing the 747, with a pop-up model of the plane, dated about 1969. Below left, cover from the Bermuda Cigar Store "on the corner'', dated about 1940, and right, a 1930s cover from the Coral Beach Club "Bermuda's Finest Bathing Beach''.

Cover encouraging americasn to Buy War Bonds, with a picture of Adolf Hitler wrapping his arms around the world. Dated about 1940. Cover marking the 1937 coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (left), and the run up to the November, 1960 US presidential election when John F. Kennedy beat Richard Nixon (right).

AUGUST 1993 RG MAGAZINE