July 6, 2006
There was a time, not so long ago, when enjoying a cigarette was not the heinous crime that it now is and, love smoking or loathe it, the activity is responsible for a enormous array of wonderful objects of industrial design.
One Friday in June, I was sitting in a café inhaling my lunch. More than that, I was playing with the ashtray. It was a simple glass affair with four grooves for holding the cigarettes, at its cardinal points.
Walking, out a woman remarked to her friend: "He shouldn't be allowed to smoke!" Well, never mind that this person should consider not sitting in the smoking section, perhaps show a little tolerance for other people or, if smoking really is presents medical problem for her, simply ask me to stop smoking. I would certainly have obliged her.
However, my point is not about rude, intolerant people. It is about the coming death of some classic pieces of industrial design: ashtrays.
Ashtrays will soon be a thing of past. Floor standing ones virtually are already. Much other tobacco related paraphernalia is already rare. How often does anyone see a cigarette case, cigarette holder or even a pipe, these days?
I spend a lot of my time in the Republic of Ireland where smoking in public is already verboten, so believe me when I say it: I can see the future.
When I was a child I played with a floor standing brass ashtray. It was an object of wonder to me and at no point did it make me want to smoke - the fact that I subsequently took up smoking is quite unrelated, I assure you.
My grandmother, a lifelong non-smoker, still has a number of ashtrays in her house, including a square one made of very heavy glass and a truly beautiful brass one mounted into a leather strap that hangs around a seat arm.
Once upon a rainbow, it was considered good manners to keep an ashtray in your home even if no one who resides there is a smoker. It was done for the convenience of visitors. Today, visitors are more often forced out into the rain and hail if they want to have a smoke.
Well, whatever. That battle is lost. But what of ashtrays?
Anyone of my age or older will remember modelling them from clay in art class. I can only assume that in today's paranoid political climate, any teacher who suggested to a class that they make something as downright devilish as an ashtray would soon find themselves in the dole queue.
Currently I own a good many ashtrays. Some simple, some not. I recall seeing one in a catalogue of middlebrow tat that was advertised in the Observer which took the shape of a set of lungs. Ho, ho, ho. This travesty of design is an insult to the multitude of amazing ashtrays that have been designed over the years. Truly, these simple, shallow trays are a wonder of mass production and will soon be a remnant of the machine age.
I'm not saying that the manufacture of ashtrays will cease come 2007, just that they are already a relatively rare item in the home of non-smokers and will soon disappear from public spaces entirely. As a result we will loose a cultural signifier so pregnant with meaning that it has become iconic.
Filled to the brim, an ashtray is a symbol of work or stress: the newspaper hack banging away at his - and it's invariably a he - typewriter, fag stuck to the lower lip as he rushes to meet the deadline, butts spilling out onto the table.
What about, the private detective engaged in hard-drinking and hard-thinking, smoking himself into an early grave, or at least a tracheotomy, as his mind opaquely solves the mystery?
Or how about an ashtray filled with lipstick-stained cigarette butts? The diversity of romances associated with ashtrays is astounding. It's a lie, of course, but then so are all romantic signifiers.
I quit smoking this week, but I will never hate smokers - and will always love ashtrays.
Posted by: Jason Walsh
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Former designer turned journalist Jason Walsh writes about design,
culture, politics and technology and has contributed to a wide range
of newspapers and magazines in the UK, the United States and Ireland.
He studied fine art at the University of Ulster and currently divides
his time between Dublin and Belfast.
