Man of Many Mats : Byron Fogel Isn’t the Only One in the United States Who Collects Place Mats. But He’s the Only One Who Has a Collection in the Smithsonian

Byron Fogel has not paid a cent for any of the 1,000-plus items in his collection. And the Smithsonian Institution in Washington has gratefully accepted duplicates of part of the collection as an important contribution to its holdings of Americana.

Fogel, 37 (a debt collector by profession), collects place mats--the flimsy rectangles of paper that they place on trays and tables in restaurants. He gets excited about an Uncle John’s Pancake House mat with a shaped border and printed with a whiskery old man and an 1890s bicycle; a McDonald’s Olympic mat showing synchronized swimming; and a Showboat Hotel Casino and Bowling Center mat from Las Vegas, which not surprisingly depicts a showboat. To him the mats are key examples of advertising techniques, imaginative artwork--and Americana. Other countries have their place mats, but in this ‘art form’ the United States, with its big fast-food chains, is supreme.

In the mid-1950s, Fogel’s mother brought him two place mats from Las Vegas. “I kept them as souvenirs,” Fogel says. “But as I grew older and started to travel, I saw other place mats. I thought: people collect matchbook covers, stamps, coins--you name it. But I’d never heard of anybody collecting place mats. And I am an advocate of collecting: I believe that anything that’s collectible should be collected.”

In 1975, Fogel was eating with a friend in a Topanga Canyon Boulevard restaurant called Two Guys From Italy. The place mats there struck him as especially good, and he suggested that his friend should start a collection of mats. “He took some home, and I thought, he’s going to collect them, and I’ll help him. But then I started to get hooked myself.” For a while, both men collected them. Eventually, the friend gave up, but Fogel became a voracious place-mat collector.

“Most people go to Vegas to gamble or to see a show ,” Fogel says. “I go there on a place-mat hunt. Up and down the Strip, the coffee shops change the mats every few months. McDonald’s doesn’t have a uniform place mat, each area of the States has its own campaign, like in the south they have grits, which they don’t have out here; and in the Midwest they had MacChicken sandwich, but they don’t have MacChicken in California.”

You might think that Fogel would have had to eat a lot of fast food to acquire his collection. Not true. He simply strides into a restaurant and asks the manager for place mats. Only once did he feel a little bashful. “My wife and I are in New Orleans, and I’m dressed in blue jeans and a work shirt; and it’s getting late on Bourbon Street. At night, Bourbon Street lights up and they close off the street and people are dancing. And I go by this nice steakhouse, and all the men are dressed up in suits and ties. I look in the window: place mats! So I feel I have to have some of those. I walk in, and I’m really nervous because I’m not dressed up properly, and the maitre d’ comes up and asks, ‘How many, sir?’ ‘No, I didn’t come here to eat. Could I have five of your place mats?’ ‘Sure.’ ”

The reason Fogel always asks for five mats is to have four for trading with other collectors. Fogel knows of only two other collectors, but he’s willing to start a mat collectors’ society if he can get in touch with enough of them. He trades with a man in Fort Wayne, Ind., who has sent him some fine mats in return. Fogel also swaps mats with a woman in San Diego whose collection is about as large as his. He made contact with her through a magazine called Collectibles Illustrated.

Fogel does not know when placemats were first manufactured or used. He has tried to find out, by writing to place-mat printers such as Springprint Paper Products Co. of Springfield, Ohio, and to McDonald’s. But no one else seems to know either. The furthest Fogel can trace the art form is to the two mats his mother brought him from Las Vegas in the mid-1950s.

His mother still looks out for mats for him. So do many of his friends. Fogel has never traveled beyond North America, but he has mats from Germany, Holland, France, England and the Orient, all brought back by vacationing friends. He showed me some from Hong Kong and Japan. “What they say, I don’t know.”

Fogel’s wife, Paula, encourages him in his collecting; though as they have a 3-year-old daughter and another baby is expected in a few months’ time, the mats cannot be left out on display in their Van Nuys home. “We put some of the collection up on the wall for your photographer,” Fogel says, “but they would get torn or would fade in the sun if we left them there.”

Byron Fogel considers place mats “an endangered species,” like the condor. “I disagree with the Audubon Society,” he says. “The only way we’re going to save the condors is by putting them in captivity--and you could say that is what I am doing with the place mats. Only, unfortunately, place mats don’t breed in captivity.”