A real object, photographed once, printed for you.
Every print in this shop starts the same way: a real vintage Chicago matchbook, found and kept, not a scan pulled from someone else's archive.
Why matchbooks
For decades, a matchbook was the cheapest advertisement a Chicago bar, hotel, or restaurant could hand out. Every one of them was designed by hand, printed small, and thrown away without a second thought once the matches were gone. Most of the venues they came from are gone too. The matchbooks are what is left.
This shop is not about "iconic Chicago." It is about the specific room somebody remembers: a bar with a particular name over the door, a hotel where a family used to stay, a restaurant with a story attached to it. The matchbook is the closest thing that survives.
How a print gets made
Every piece in the catalog is a real, physical matchbook first. It gets photographed by hand in the studio, under real light, at full resolution, not scanned flat or pulled from a phone photo of an old photo. What you see in a print is what the object actually looks like: the texture of the paper, the wear on the corners, the striker strip on the back.
Prints are made on matte, archival paper, in six sizes from five by seven up to twenty-four by thirty-six. Nothing is a digital download. Every order is a physical, archival print, produced through our print partner and shipped to you.
Who this is for
Vintage and retro decor collectors. Mid-century enthusiasts. People with a real, personal connection to this city: a former resident, a Chicago alum, someone who grew up two blocks from a bar that does not exist anymore. If a piece in the catalog means something specific to you, that is exactly who it was made for.