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Griswold Match Machine

Griswold Mfg. Co., Rock Island, IL, c. 1920, 15 ¹/₂". This is a 2-column match vendor. The base and lid are porcelainized cast iron, and the front and sides are glass set into a metal framework painted black. The advertising you see in front is paper---I think it's thin cardboard---behind the glass. The glass sides are the unusual feature of this model; with metal sides it'd be a conventional 2-column vendor, but I'm not aware of another 2-column match vendor that used so much glass in such a vulnerable position. That, and the fact that it has white porcelain, is why I'd looked for one of these for quite awhile before I found this.

This is very similar to another (much less common) match vendor made by H. E. Winters. You can see both models side-by-side here. The Winters is a little bigger, but the design features are so similar that it's hard to believe one wasn't deliberately based on the other, although I don't know which came first.

The example above is 100% original.