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The Quest to The Perfect Ashtray

The Quest to The Perfect Ashtray

Isamu Noguchi’s quest to design the ideal ashtray

May 02, 2024

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🗞️ The Story

In the vibrant era of the 1950s, smoking wasn't just a habit—it was a symbol of allure and sophistication, with ashtrays adorning American homes like universal accessories on every tabletop. Yet, amidst this smoke-laden ambiance, ashtrays stood not just as receptacles for ashes but as intriguing design objects. For the renowned midcentury sculptor and designer Isamu Noguchi, they presented an unexpected opportunity.

Before Noguchi's acclaimed paper Akari lanterns and iconic coffee table became staples of midcentury design, he grappled with financial uncertainty as a budding artist. The humble ashtray, albeit seemingly mundane, sparked Noguchi's imagination as a lucrative design challenge. If he could reimagine this everyday object with excellence, the market for such a refined creation was boundless.

The challenge lay in transforming this "silly little trinket," as Noguchi termed it, into a pinnacle of interior design. His quest began by reimagining what an ideal ashtray would encompass: spacious enough for numerous cigarette butts, accommodating multiple cigarettes without rolling off, featuring extinguishing elements, all while exuding aesthetic appeal.

His exploration yielded a series of asymmetrical bowls with fluid contours and intricate indentations, resembling miniature natural landscapes—waves, calderas, and other organic forms—echoing his affinity for nature evident throughout his oeuvre.

After painstakingly sculpting nine plaster prototypes, Noguchi settled on a final design featuring a broad rim ideal for securely resting cigarettes at any angle. Despite initially believing he had achieved perfection, Noguchi swiftly dismissed his creation as 'garbage' the following day, deeming it no different from ordinary ashtrays.

Undeterred, Noguchi conceptualized a second design crafted from metal, comprising a holder and a detachable bottom with raised pegs resembling bullets. This innovative approach allowed smokers to rest their cigarettes atop the pegs and easily extinguish them by sticking them vertically between the pegs or tapping them on top.

Notarized design drawing dated February 8, 1945, for a patent application for an ashtray design by Isamu Noguchi.

Despite being meticulously engineered for mass production, Noguchi's ashtrays proved too intricate for widespread manufacturing—a recurring challenge in his creative process. While he often envisioned designs for mass appeal, he resisted compromising his artistic integrity by simplifying them for mass production.

Noguchi tried for several years to get a manufacturer to produce his ideas, but never found one.

Despite the setbacks, Noguchi's relentless pursuit of perfection led him to focus on other household objects, notably the iconic coffee table and the beloved Akari paper lamps, as he also bid farewell to smoking later in life.

Yet, his foray into ashtray design remains a testament to his inquisitive mind, reverence for materials, and belief in the transformative power of objects, regardless of their size.

Perhaps you're wondering, ironically, what the artist himself used as an ashtray? A simple clamshell he most likely found on a Long Island beach, as well as Italian designer Bruno Munari's Cubo tray, both of which appear in archival photographs of Noguchi in his Long Island City studio.