S.T. Dupont 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Large Ashtray — Pacific

S.T. Dupont 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Large Ashtray — Pacific

At four thousand leagues below the Pacific, the Nautilus moves through a world where the color of everything is determined by depth, not by light. Verne describes it as a place of transparency and mystery — a zone where the ocean's immensity becomes fully visible and the submarine's crew understands, perhaps for the first time, how far they have traveled from the surface world. S.T. Dupont's Pacific large ashtray takes that color — deep turquoise, the specific hue of the Pacific at extreme depth — and applies it to the collection's most commanding table piece.

Pacific — The Chapter and the Color

"4,000 Leagues Under the Pacific" is the novel's deepest chapter, in every sense. The Pacific range uses the color of that depth: deep turquoise lacquer, richer and more saturated than the Gulf Stream's blue, applied over the Nautilus pattern in relief. Where the Gulf Stream ashtray uses the blue of a powerful surface current, the Pacific uses the turquoise of something far below — a color that only exists where sunlight is filtered almost to nothing, but not quite. The hand-painted finish in the grooves is golden rather than the Gulf Stream's chrome-toned application — the warmth of gold against turquoise, like filtered deep-sea light on a brass surface.

Nautilus Pattern / Hand-Painted Gold Grooves

The large ashtray's Nautilus pattern is rendered in porcelain relief, the grooves hand-painted in gold over a glossy turquoise lacquer base. The gold accumulates in the lower registers of the pattern's relief, bringing warmth to the surface's deepest points — the inverse of the way light would behave at depth, and exactly the right effect for a piece meant to be looked at closely. The glossy turquoise above the grooves reflects differently than the gold within them, giving the ashtray a surface that changes with the light and the angle.

At 200 × 170mm and 610g, the Pacific large ashtray is a piece that commands the room it occupies. In turquoise and gold, it is the warmest statement in the 20,000 Leagues collection.

Now available at The Tobacconist of Greenwich.