Lighters and smoking

"The lighter (and the collection) remind me of my Dad but also Ireland from the 1940s through to the 1970s when smoking and cigarettes was a way of life, a fashion accessory and a mechanism to barter and make money. From my Father's letters, in the later 1940s, making sure he had money for 'ciggies' or 'the smokes' was the most important - and 'owing cigarettes' or 'lending cigarettes' to someone else seems to have been part and parcel of youthful activity in those times. The "Ireland' lighter also symbolises those times when you would go on holidays - to the country or to the 'seaside' and would pick up a memento. It harks of rural Ireland when the Dads would sit in the car to listen to a match on the radio (the 'wireless' up to the ear) and mothers and children would be the ones on the beach - but with both parents puffing away while the kids splashed around and built sand castles. The collection reminds me of a time when it was hip to smoke, from the cigarette holders to the variety of lighters from so many different places - a universal habit that drew cultures together in a way that was normalised and when health hazards found little place in the social consciousness. "