This research work intends to show part of the Portuguese Match Industry, more specifically, the matchbox labels produced and commercialized from the last quarter of the 19th century until the last decade of the 20th century.

The Portuguese match industry had the particularity to survive for a period covering the monarchy, the republic and the Portuguese dictatorship. This allowed us to analyze possible intersections between the socio-political conditions, the importance of everyday life, the cultural and the intellectual climate of the time.
It is therefore a visual research, that it looks for since the beginning to approach its historical way, including their functional and symbolic changes resulting from the cultural, social, economic and technological transformations. In this way, walk-off points can be considered crucial to understand how the factors outlined were influential in graphic expressions of the object of study.

The book “Phosphoros - Rótulos com História", is a editorial project , appears with the aim of illustrating all the documentary material gathered during the investigation, following the axis of analysis carried out and described above.

This book has 80 pages and has about 500 labels!