It would be possible to build an enormous Museum exhibit about ashtrays. A nation, nay, a world, of smokers has produced them by the tens of millions in almost endless variety. Collecting them is easy, inexpensive and fascinating. By shopping yard sales and thrift shops, a large and diverse collection can be build inexpensively, at prices from 25¢ to $10 each.
With a very few exceptions, the ashtrays seen here were purchased as an experiment in less than a year, with minimal effort or cost. Like cigar boxes, ashtrays can be sorted into “mini-collections” by topic, material, source, design, or advertising...whatever turns you on: military themes, nudes, hats, hands, animals, mouths, casinos, tires, pre 1900, advertising figures, comic, buildings, souvenirs, railroads, sports, nodders, novelties, tobacco products, restaurants, gas stations, hotels & motels, beverages, pot metal, Italian glass, crystal...whatever you want. This exhibit barely touches on the available variety.
For pictures of a great many more see Nancy Wanvig’s Collector’s Guide to Ashtrays, now out of print, available second-hand.
Ashtrays
A National Cigar Museum Exclusive
© Tony Hyman
V-1 rocket diving through a bronze V given by Adolph Hitler to select scientists at Penemunde. Purchased at a yard sale by an antique dealer for $5 from the soldier who “liberated” it. Purchased by my wife from the dealer in 1974 as a gift.
A curator’s favorite. [KCD44 - 1]
Hunter-Killer group aircraft carrier. Example of
interesting military ashtrays available.
[KCD44 - 11]
Rare military ashtray from prison where
German war criminals were housed.
[KCD44 - 12]
Multi-category ashtray purchased by sailor in Guam: military, souvenir, nude.
[KCD44 - 10]
Metal souvenir of French buildings.
[KCD44 - 8]
3-D aluminum advertising give-away, a
fine multi-category piece.
[KCD44 - 22]
Interesting style of small give-away ashtray given
away by more than one cigar company.
[KCD44 - 40]
Large ceramic cigar ashtray for Dunhill.
[12719]
This small lidded square ashtray made of celluloid advertising PAUL JONES cigars. A highly flammable ashtray...make sense to you?
[KCD44 - 15]
Wood and celluloid advertising ashtray used by
famous PA maker A.S. Valentine
[12718]
Ad by Herbert Shivers & Co., Philadelphia
cigar makers depicting their line. Note
the ashtray upper left, also pictured
on their brochure.
[12715]
The art nouveau woman ashtray with
Shivers imprint cast on the underside.
[12716]
Bronze and marble combination cutter-ashtray with bronze nude signed by Austrian artist Kauba.
A classic design, frequently poorly copied in inferior materials and design.
[KCD44 - 5]
Every man’s nightmare cigar cutter.
Cheap examples sell for a few hundred dollars; quality pieces signed by important artists
for a few thousand.
[KCD44 - 6]
Small bronze nudes can be found in substantial variety on bases of marble or abalone shell.
They are almost always in dancer’s poses.
[KCD44 - 16]
[12720]
[12721]
Antique desk-top combination match box holder
and ashtray patented in 1896. Made in NY.
[12742]
Nudes of lesser pose and materials
can still be collectible.
[KCD44 - 14]
Turn of the century brass cutters come in huge
variety with somewhat clumsy ashtrays.
The cigar should be tucked in his lap.
[KCD44 - 13]
Rare, high quality, classically beautiful ashtray
by Ronson with accompanying lighter-clock.
This pedestal beauty is designed for cigars.
[KCD44 - 3]
Interesting flower-petal ashtrays were designed for a home coffee table, each of the room’s smokers able to pluck a petal and have an individual ashtray. Found in wide range of quality material and casting.
[KCD44 - 7]
Very lovely Italian glass swordfish.
[KCD44 - 17]
Italian glass clown ashtray.
[KCD44 - 18]
“Do your cigarettes taste different lately?”
Gag ashtray with rubber dog peeing.
[KCD44 - 19]
Gag ashtray with golfer trying to putt ball
into the ashtray.
[KCD44 - 23]
Plaster ashtray of lazy W.P.A. workman.
[KCD44 - 31]
Racist Black nodder.
[KCD44 - 41]
Brass novelty ashtray in original box.
[KCD44 - 25]
Brass novelty.
[KCD44 - 27]
Legs and fan move on this Japanese novelty,
a form of nodder.
[KCD44 - 26]
What is there to say?
[KCD44 - 29]
Japanese-made china figural ashtrays.
[KCD44 - 28]
How can someone living in Shell Beach
not love this Japanese china figural?
[KCD44 - 30]
Mouths, which I focussed on during my
experimental year of seeing what
I could buy cheaply. Skull is a favorite.
[KCD44 - 32]
Japanese-made “mouths” where the cigarette
rests in the figure’s mouth.
[KCD44 - 33]
A small “Made in Japan” ceramic piece
I used on my desk for paperclips.
[12737]
Having lived for eighteen months in Hawaii,
how could I resist such a happy ashtray?
[12736]
The cigarette isn’t in his mouth, but that’s
where the smoke emerges.
[KCD44 - 34]
Similar mouths and smoke blowers.
[KCD44 - 35]
Animal mouths can be a collection of its own.
[KCD44 - 38]
Sleek black panther so typical of the 1950’s. this one a souvenir of Boonville, New York, not exactly
a town one associates with panthers.
Great looking, though.
[KCD44 - 21]
Large 9” or more ceramic ashtrays became popular decorator items on the front room coffee tables
of America. This has a rest for 6 cigarettes
and 2 cigars.
[12744]
What exactly this represents is left to your imagination. The blemish in the lower left
quadrant edge is a manufacturing defect
not a chip.
[12743]
Potpourri of pipe-shaped china ashtrays, including one with a hill-billy, another with
a small white nude.
[KCD44 - 37]
I easily built a collection of a dozen pipe-shaped
ashtrays, all but this made of china.
[KCD44 - 36]
Huge, very heavy, waiting-room tobacco leaf.
[KCD44 - 39]
Brass camel ashtray with no formal
cigarette rests.
[12735]
Small 4” Griswold frying pan ashtray, worth $5 to $10. The same size frying pan is very valuable,
worth 100x as much to cast iron collectors.
[12722]
From cast iron to silver plate. This lovely cup with its rest for a single cigar is intended for the Master’s place at the dinner table. Made in Taunton, Mass., by a maker whose stamp is illegible.
[12819]
Cute made-in-Japan battery driven ashtray-lighter combination. When the lighter is cross-wise (as seen) the vehicle is parked; put the lighter front-to-back and the truck slowly drives across the table.
[12717]
Another super whimsical piece...the type of item that made me start collecting ashtrays. Lightweight sheet metal, cigarette rests on both sides of the boiler, and smoke out the stack.
[12818]
My vote for one of the greatest
floor model cigar ashtrays.
It rolls!
[KCD44 - 24]
