Matchsticks are like tiny little pieces of building materials that inspire model makers to bend them to the artist's will. Some amazing and imaginative pieces are born from such inspiration, and they're not all architectural sculptures. Let's look at some of the many ways creative folks use matchsticks.  

1. Wieslaw Laszkeiwick's Matchstick Church

Photograph by Piotr Stasuik.

Polish artist Wieslaw Laszkeiwick began building models out of matchsticks when he was a child. His most ambitious piece to date is this model of the Church of St. Nicholas in Zamosc, built as a gift to Pope Benedict XVI. Half a million matchsticks were selected, carved just so, placed, and varnished to complete the church. There is even a light inside to illuminate the stained glass windows! See more pictures of the project. 

2. Shaikh Salimbhai's Taj Mahal

Photograph by Sam Panthaky/AFP.

Shaikh Salimbhai devoted a year and 19 days to building a scale replica of the Taj Mahal out of matchsticks. He used 75,000 or so matchsticks to complete the project. The attention to detail is incredible! The finished product was unveiled in Ahmedabad, the capital of Gujarat, India.

3. Jay Wilson's Matchstick and Toothpick Elks

Photograph by Steve Payne.

Toronto artist and professor Jay Wilson uses matchsticks and toothpicks together to create all kinds of sculptures and artworks. In recent years, he has produced a series of framed motivational works featuring elk with antlers, some in color with the use of crayons. See more of Wilson's elks, including closeups of the details.

4. Jack Hall's Ukulele

Jack Hall was known as "The Matchstick Man." He made all kinds of playable musical instruments by gluing matchsticks together. The ukulele he completed in 1984 was composed of over 10,000 matchsticks, which got Hall an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records. He would carefully shape matchsticks into the needed curves by soaking them until they were soft and shaping them with weights while they dried. Hall also made a ukulele case out of matchboxes!   

5. Prison Weapons

This group of weapons was confiscated from an unnamed prison inmate in Monmouthshire, Wales. They caused quite a bit of consternation among prison officials, even after it was determined that they were all constructed of matchsticks! Geekier eyes recognized the weapons as recreations of weapons found in the Final Fantasy video game universe. As weapons used to threaten, they are definitely contraband. But among Final Fantasy aficionados, they are well-done works of art, and even more so considering the dearth of materials and the secrecy in which they were constructed.

6. Roman Yerokhin's Matchstick Furniture

You might think these furniture pieces are made of or covered with a distinctive weave of rattan or other material, but no -these patterns are made with burnt matchsticks! When Roman Yerokhin was growing up in the Soviet Union, art supplies were scarce. His mother and father, both artists, wanted to make their plain Soviet-era furniture into something more personal and eye-catching, so they saved every match they burned, and even burned boxes of matches when they needed more materials. Each burnt match was laid out carefully on a cardboard backing for stability and then attached to furniture pieces. Yerokhin's apartment is filled with furniture and art pieces that he or his family have decorated in matchsticks.

7. Claire Fontaine Blazing Matchstick Map

Matchsticks are almost like tiny logs, perfect to make architectural miniatures, but they are made to burn. French art collective Claire Fontaine created a map of the United States using 50,000 matches with their flammable heads intact. The work was titled America (Burnt/Unburnt). The installation at Queen's Nails Gallery in San Francisco was set on fire last month -a stunt that Claire Fontaine had done previously with a matchstick map of France- but this time it didn't end as planned. The gallery caught on fire, and firefighters were called to put it out. No one was injured, and the fire damage was minimal -although there was a lot of smoke. See more pictures of the project

8. Stanislav Aristov's Burning Matchstick Art

Done on a smaller scale, art created from burning matchsticks can be lovely. Russian artist and photographer Stanislav Aristov combines photographic elements of burnt matchsticks, flame, and the smoke produced to create images of ethereal living creatures. Aristove has images of insects, fish, mammals, reptiles, and more, but in these works, they are all "fire flies!"

9. Yurko Gutsulyak's Matchstick Calendar

With a matchstick calendar designed by Yurko Gutsulyak, you can literally burn the days behind you. Each page is a month, and each day is made of a paper match, which can be detached and used as you see fit after the day is gone. This particular calendar, which may have been one-of-a-kind, was for 2008.

10. Mark Colling's Titanic

Mark Colling of Llanelli, Wales, has been building boats out of matchsticks since 1998. His first model of the Titanic was 6 feet long, but that wasn't titanic enough. He then started on a 19-foot-long scale replica of the doomed ocean liner. The project, completed in late 2006, used 3.5 million matchsticks! See details, from the crow's nest to the deck chairs, in this gallery.  

For more artworks and sculptures made from matchsticks, see our previous posts: 10 Amazing Matchstick Sculptures, Amazing Sculptures Made With Matchsticks, and The Matchstick Model Monastery 16 Years In The Making.