Berkshire Eagle, March 2024

HINSDALE — In November 2022, Sara Paul dove deep into online collections of vintage art. A graphic designer by trade, Paul had been tasked with designing a Berkshires-specific logo, so she turned to the past as a source of inspiration.

While researching, Paul scrolled past some old matchbooks.

“These are really cool,” she thought. She ordered her first matchbook, from the storied Pittsfield business England Brothers, from eBay. She scanned it into her computer, blowing it up to a larger size and printing the scan so she could appreciate the craftsmanship. It was tiny — 1.5 by 3 inches — and shockingly beautiful.

What’s more, it vividly conjured a Berkshires of the past, when smoking cigarettes was ubiquitous and matchbooks were a common form of local business advertising. She started furiously collecting them and four years later, she’s amassed around 5,000 matchbooks. Now, she runs Shire Prints, curating exhibitions and selling enlarged scans of matchbook art.

“Thank God they’re little or I’d have to move!” she said during a recent interview from her Hinsdale home, surrounded by the matchbooks.

“When you blow them up, you see everything — sometimes finger prints, sometimes the striker has been struck. There’s all this history to them,” she said. “We’re losing so much history, with GE pulling out in the 1980s, not a lot of work, restaurants shut down. We’re in a tricky place right now. With the matchbooks, you can create this almost visual ethnography, a map of what the Berkshires were.”

When Paul first started collecting, she found vintage matchbooks from still-operating businesses like Bousquet Ski Area, The Red Lion Inn and Cove Lanes in Great Barrington, alongside ones from long-closed businesses like Tanglewood Motor Court in Lenox.

“You could tell that people spent quite a bit of time on them,” she said. “They were just mind-blowingly intricate in their details. So I decided to scan them.”

But when she outsourced a printer to enlarge the imagery, Paul was unsatisfied.

“The quality was — how do I say this? Really not up to the standards these images deserved,” she said. “And I was like, ‘No, no, no. I have to do this myself.' I wanted to have more control over the color and everything.”

Paul bought a high-quality printer — her primary expense, which she calls her “favorite toy in the world” — and ordered archival ink as well as Red River Polar Matte paper.

She dove deep into “the black web of matchbook collecting,” as she calls it. Her friends gave her heads-up when they saw places she might find more, like at a Pittsfield estate sale this past summer.

“I got this treasure trove [of matchbooks] from this gentleman,” she said. “I don’t remember his name, I don’t remember the estate sale. But [I got] hundreds — no, thousands! All of them categorized, labeled. My mind went a million places.”

Last May, she called the Phoenix Theatres Beacon Cinema, asking if they’d be interested in displaying some of her images.

“I wanted them to be at a place where the average person could see them, because not everyone walks into galleries,” she said. “And it’s on North Street, and most of the matchbooks’ businesses were in that area or Tyler Street or West Street.”

Not only was the theater’s leadership interested, but they wanted to know if she could have a display ready within a week.

“I built my website in two days, I printed everything, I had the frames custom-made. I was in total panic mode,” she said. But she got the exhibit together, and it was successful. A couple months later, she had a show at Dottie’s Coffee Lounge in Pittsfield. Directly after that, she had a show at The Marketplace Cafe on North Street.

She also started selling the prints on her website, where they’re accompanied by a description of the history of each piece.

“I am a single mom. I was like, ‘I have to figure something else out beside a full time job. And I was like, ‘I know, I’ll make art!’” she laughed. 

Her prints — which are available for $42, $58 or $65, depending on size — come at a much lower price than the average painting for sale in a gallery, she said. Paul loves collecting art herself, but feels that it’s often not affordable, so she tries to keep her work as accessible as possible. Prints can be purchased at shireprints.com.

Eventually, she started collecting matchbooks from businesses beyond the Berkshires, including a collection of American Jewish Stamps which the Jewish Museum in New York City has expressed interest in. She’ll also be displaying more work at Dottie’s Coffee Lounge, and curating a gallery with both her own work and that of other artists.

Now, every day over her morning coffee, Paul looks through matchbooks.

“And I find the ones that are very striking to me. Get it, striking? Sorry,” she said.

She gets lots of personal responses from people who have connections to certain businesses. She always tells people that if they can’t find what they’re looking for on her website, they should email her; it’s not unlikely she has it somewhere in her house. And if she doesn’t, she’s determined to find it.

“In the age of 'go, go, go, quicker,' we need this,” she said.

This summer, she might go to a matchbook convention in Kentucky; if past photos are any indication, she expects to be the only woman there — and, at 50 years old, a few decades younger than anyone else.

“People ask me for things and I think, ‘Ooh, that’s a good idea. I’ll try that.’ Tote bags, T-shirts, mugs,” she said. Her old graphic design job has started creating work exclusively with artificial intelligence, which she appreciates for what it is. “It’s really cool. But the artistry that went into these beautiful pieces of artwork? They feel better. They’re from a real time, a real place, a real person.”

Paul has been working as an artist her entire life — but this is the first time she’s ever sold her own work or that it's been exhibited.

“I found my thing,” she said. “It’s nostalgia, it’s art, it’s everything. It’s an obsession. It’s a problem! But it’s good. This feels really good.”