Comments on: Clive Murphy, Phillumenist

By: Thea Fiore-Bloom

Thea Fiore-Bloom — Tue, 15 Nov 2022 20:28:59 +0000

Thank you Clive for never throwing out this gem of a collection. What joy this brought to me today. I collected stamps and coins as a girl with equal fervor but have no evidence of it now. There is something so wonderful about enlightened folks who understand and treasure supposedly “non-valuable” things.

By: Allison Cranmer

Allison Cranmer — Tue, 15 Nov 2022 16:31:24 +0000

Very excited to see your article on Clive Murphy, Phillumenist! As a young boy my husband also collected matchbox tops and like Clive did not keep the boxes but put them in an album. His grandfather worked for British Rail and brought him the boxes he found left behind in the carriages. My husband’s collection reflects the UK, Continental Europe and some Asian and American. Many years after my husband’s grandfather passed his mother sent him the album (we live in Canada). A number of years I decided to float the covers off the album pages and mount them as you would stamps onto a backing 5’x3.5′ and had the whole lot framed. Over the years the covers have taken pride of place in our various homes and have always been looked at, pondered over and admired by visitors.

By: Cherub

Cherub — Tue, 15 Nov 2022 13:02:40 +0000

This makes me wish I had held on to the collection of beer mats I amassed as a teenager. The artwork is very colourful and has a sense of joy to it.

By: Lynne Perrella

Lynne Perrella — Tue, 15 Nov 2022 11:48:12 +0000

I always look forward to seeing lovingly-amassed collections of ephemera…….and this one is a pip.
Artists who have made their mark by exploring ephemeral flotsam and jetsam — Andy Warhol and Peter Blake, are two notables — turned a spotlight on the unnoticed charms of throw-aways.
Think: Warhol’s detergent boxes, and Blake’s use of Victorian scrap, etc.
Spitalfields Life has lavished us with remarkable/personal collections of ephemera, PLUS provided the back stories of the collectors. What a banquet!?

(perhaps a future SL publishing venture will be an “album” of various ephemeral delights? Imagine the saved bus tickets, the packaging of the fireworks, Mr. Murphy’s matchbooks, the cigarette cards, the tradesmen’s labels………all together, in one grand presentation? Ah, a
girl can hope.)

By: achim

achim — Tue, 15 Nov 2022 09:13:21 +0000

You could call that POP ART. In the enlarged reproduction of the matchbox labels, their quality can be seen even better.

I still have the boxes of SCOTTISH BLUEBELL MATCHES and ENGLAND’S GLORY, brought back from Britain, on my bookshelf because I find them so magnificent.

Clive Murphy was truly an artistic aesthete!

Love & Peace
ACHIM