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Portland Star Match Factory. Portland, Me.

Boston, ca. 1880. Geo. H. Walker & Co., lith. Lithograph, 14” x 19.75” plus margins. CONDITION: Very good, old paper tape repair to tear in left margin just into image with associated light stain.

A scarce advertising lithograph depicting the Portland Star Match Factory in Portland, Maine, with much detail regarding the exterior operations.

This interesting industrial view shows the factory building situated at the edge of Portland Harbor, enlivened by a busy surrounding scene. Railroad tracks, a Boston & Maine Rail Road locomotive, and a well-stocked lumber yard are visible in the foreground. Men work at removing logs from loaded rail cars and several men are involved in a saw mill operation attached to the building. Numerous vessels can be seen plying the waters of the harbor and South Portland is visible in the background.

The Portland Star Match Company was founded around 1870. By 1888, thirty-nine women and girls worked in the factory as match bunchers, earning five dollars a week packaging finished matches for market. The work was hazardous, as matches could easily ignite. Moreover, workers ran the risk of phosphorous poisoning, which could result in the destruction of the jawbone known as “phossy jaw.” The Portland Star Match Company was sold to the Diamond Match Company circa 1908, which eventually moved the operation out of the city. The building, however, is extant and now repurposed, located on Commercial Street.

Lithographer George H. Walker (1848–1927) was born in Springfield, Vermont and by 1879 was in business in Boston as a map publisher, producing wall maps of cities. Initially subcontracting the printing, he entered into partnership with his brother, Oscar Walker, in 1880 and the firm soon established a printing operation, issuing lithographs, engravings, and photolithographs. Walker & Co. was the last of the great Boston lithographic houses established in the nineteenth century. Their output included maps, sheet music covers, portraits, book illustrations, and views of cities, residences, and factories.

REFERENCES: “Working Women of the Old Port,” #8, at Maine History Online; “Portland Star Match Factory” at Portland Women’s History Trail online; Pierce, Sally and Catharina Slautterback. Boston Lithography, 1825–1880 (Boston, 1991), p. 159.

Item #8960

Price: $1,800.00

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