Doulton Match Strikers
Match holders and match strikers are not new. They have quite a grand history and have been used for centuries. Your grandparents and great-grandparents might have used them to light their stoves and candles. Even now, you can buy them as antiques or newly manufactured ones in the style of antiques. Typically you would pour your matches into the match holder, and there would be hard ridges that you could strike the matches on; in this case, you'd be using "strike anywhere" matches which can be struck on any rough surface.

The Doulton story is one of two parts; the company started in 1815 in Vauxhall, London followed by a location in Lambeth. The early London period was all about utilitarian stoneware including lavatories, bathroom essentials, storage jars, ale flagons, pipes, drains and so forth. This then evolved into art stoneware-pottery production that we know as Doulton Lambeth. Doulton Lambeth decorative items were in stoneware, generally decorated with saltglaze and mostly featured signatures of the artists to the base.

In 1882 it opened a factory in Burslem, in the heart of the Staffordshire potteries, and in 1902 a royal warrant was awarded and thus they became Royal Doulton. The focus of the Burslem factory was to move the company further in the direction of decorative tableware and ornaments in bone china. So, when we see smooth glazed decorative tea-sets or glossy figurines it is usually under the Royal Doulton label