How Maachis is bringing big ideas to a matchbox-sized canvas

If you grew up in India, chances are your first encounter with design wasn’t in a museum but in your kitchen drawer. Those little matchboxes with their roaring tigers, flying swans, and glamorous goddesses were everywhere. They lit stoves, cigarettes, and sometimes, imaginations. Each label was a mini poster, a slice of pop culture, and, for many of us, a quiet memory of home.

For Sonal Nagwani, that memory never really left. “I used to have a huge collection from which I used to make small miniature sofa sets out of cigarette boxes and matchboxes,” she recalls. Years later, that playful nostalgia found its second life in Maachis, an art revival project she co-founded with fellow designer Kevin Thomas, both graduates with design backgrounds. Nagwani studied at the Symbiosis Institute of Design in Pune, while Thomas graduated from St. Joseph’s College in Bengaluru. Before Maachis, Thomas worked as a product designer, and Nagwani worked as a brand strategy consultant. Together, they swapped their 9-to-5 jobs for something far more hands-on.

With their Bengaluru-based brand, the duo hopes to transform India’s forgotten matchbox designs into collectible wooden boxes, each a little work of art. This passion project—equal parts curiosity and rebellion—has quickly turned into a hit. “We did our first stall at the Bloom in Green festival in Bengaluru in December last year. And we were sold out in three days,” she says. “That made us realise that people want this. People have that connection with the matches already.”

You’ll find handcrafted ivory-wood boxes with magnetic bodies, bold illustrations, and stories that straddle nostalgia and now. Their reinterpretations are clever, sometimes cheeky, and not afraid to make a statement. ‘Make Art Not War’, for instance, takes Raja Ravi Varma’s famous painting of a woman holding a bowl of fruit and replaces it with a watermelon. It is a quiet nod to Palestine and a piece of art that doubles as a comment on peace, protest, and the politics of beauty.

The ‘Anti Nazar’ matchbox, on the other hand, takes the classic evil-eye motif and gives it a contemporary, tongue-in-cheek twist. “We could have just said Nazar Battu. But it might not be valid for the younger audience that we are targeting,” Nagwani laughs. There’s ‘Bullet Rani’, which shows a woman in a bright sari riding a roaring motorbike, wind in her hair, bangles flying. The caption reads: “In a world that tells you to sit pillion, this matchbox hands you the handlebars. Take control, you run the world.” Their ‘11:11’ collectible captures a quieter kind of rebellion. Inspired by a generation that swears by manifestation culture, the box says, “Make a Wish. No Guarantee.” It is a wink at our obsession with timing, hope, and the slightly absurd rituals of modern spirituality. Together, these designs show what Maachis does best. It borrows the charm and intricacy of older matchbox art and gives it a new meaning.

Nagwani calls matchboxes “the most democratic gallery”, something that can be found in a tea stall, in a truck driver’s pocket or a grandmother’s altar. “Everybody had access to it... I don’t know if every medium can do that,” she says. “We want to tell stories through that so that the medium continues to inspire us. It holds that sort of value—that, okay, it can be a conversation starter.”

One such conversation starter is ‘Sundari’, a reinterpretation of old matchbox art that challenges conventional beauty ideals. The artwork features a bold, dusky woman, confident and radiant, reclaiming the word ‘Sundari’ itself, which capitalism and advertising have long tied to fairness creams and narrow beauty standards.

Staying true to that democratic spirit, Maachis often brings other artists into the mix. One of them is Deeya Thakur, who designed ‘Bismillah’ and ‘Big Dawgs’. Nagwani explains that they prefer working with artists on a royalty basis, so the credit and value stay with the creators. It’s their way of keeping the art form open, shared, and constantly evolving.

And while matchboxes are their chosen medium, the brand also offers postcards and T-shirts, and customisable collectibles for brands. They are popping up in all the right places—designer Payal Khandwala commissioned them to make her Diwali giveaways, Subko Craftery designed another for their launch in Bengaluru. Their collectibles have even found takers in faraway Amsterdam, where they are sold at Kurumbu, an Indian-themed cafe that serves specialty chai and sandwiches.

And as those sparks travel farther, you can see how a small brand built on small boxes is bringing big ideas into play. And maybe that’s why people are drawn to it. In a world that moves fast, Maachis takes something forgotten and asks us to look again.