Two canoe surfing illustrations of the same vintage appear on different printed items. They were created by a company and an individual who both worked between the years 1934 and 1942.

The advertising matchbook for the Wonder Bar was printed by the Crown Match Co. in Los Angeles. Crown’s graphic designs are easily recognized by matchbook collectors since they’re substantially better than any of its competitors at the time.

Advertising matchbooks were a big business for decades in the USA, from a time when a much larger number of people smoked. Given away for free, they’d carry their message for as long as the matches held out.

People started collecting such matchbooks by the 1920s and in some cases amassed huge numbers of them, for which we can be grateful, since such disposable items would be very rare otherwise, and we’d never be able to see them today.