In Popular Culture
"Vestas", without the capital, appear in the Sherlock Holmes story Silver Blaze, and finding a half-burned one is one of the clues that helps solve the crime. They also appear in the story The Man with the Twisted Lip, as the professional beggar Hugh Boone pretends "a small trade in wax vestas" to avoid the police. In both of these stories, "vesta" is used as a generic term for "match". The discovery of "an odd vesta or two" made it possible for Richard Hannay to escape confinement in John Buchan's novel "The Thirty-Nine Steps." They are also mentioned in Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves on p. 466 as a personal item Navidson decides to bring with him into the house.
Swan Vestas matches are also used as an instrument in the off-Broadway and touring productions of Stomp, with the actors alternating between shaking and striking full boxes of matches - with the striker heads removed - to create a musical number.
Read more about this topic: Swan Vesta
Famous quotes containing the words popular and/or culture:
“Heroes are created by popular demand, sometimes out of the scantiest materials, or none at all.”
—Gerald W. Johnson (1890–1980)
“Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting the progress of the arts and the sciences and a flourishing culture in our land.”
—Mao Zedong (1893–1976)