Cigarette for One
For the one-year anniversary exhibition of the Fisher Parrish Gallery, designers were invited to create an ashtray.
The ashtray is an object of near design-lore. Once an everyday, every-home accessory where all designers would make a mark, its unique design is a casualty of our health-conscious contemporary life. As Murray Moss once put it, "Bereft of the ashtray, a near-extinct species, the coffee table has never recovered, a Romeo without his Juliet."
Cigarette for One is a totem to the dying ritual of smoking a cigarette to end the night and reflect on the day. It's a contemplative object, taking the typologically universal cigarette holder and switching its orientation, gesturing towards the thing it holds. It takes cues from the monumental quality of Isamu Noguchi's proposal for Sculpture to be Seen from Mars, in a bid to be both an everyday item and a swan song.
The ashtray is an object of near design-lore. Once an everyday, every-home accessory where all designers would make a mark, its unique design is a casualty of our health-conscious contemporary life. As Murray Moss once put it, "Bereft of the ashtray, a near-extinct species, the coffee table has never recovered, a Romeo without his Juliet."
Cigarette for One is a totem to the dying ritual of smoking a cigarette to end the night and reflect on the day. It's a contemplative object, taking the typologically universal cigarette holder and switching its orientation, gesturing towards the thing it holds. It takes cues from the monumental quality of Isamu Noguchi's proposal for Sculpture to be Seen from Mars, in a bid to be both an everyday item and a swan song.
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Included in the Noguchi Museum exhibition The Sculptor and the Ashtray.
Designed in collaboration with Joseph Guerra.