Stefano Ricci SR Cigar Cutter — Mother of Pearl / Gold

Stefano Ricci SR Cigar Cutter — Mother of Pearl / Gold

The decorative pairing of gold and Mother of Pearl has a longer history than almost any other combination in the luxury object tradition. Egyptian jewelry, Chinese imperial lacquerwork, European Renaissance goldsmiths, Victorian vanity cases, Art Nouveau brooches — every tradition that had access to both materials used them together, because the relationship between warm metal and cool iridescent nacre is not a convention but a genuine formal logic: each material articulates what the other is. Gold is warm, precise, and fixed in its color. Mother of Pearl is cool, organic, and iridescent in a way that changes with the observer's angle and the quality of the light around it. Together they are not simply complementary — they are instructive about each other.

Real Mother of Pearl

The nacre on this cutter is genuine — built inside the mollusk layer by layer over time, not manufactured or approximated. The optical depth that produces iridescence — light entering the surface, refracting through hundreds of laminations, and exiting as spectral shimmer — exists only in the real material. It is perceptible at the close range at which a cutter is held: the nacre shifts as the piece moves from table to hand, catches the available light differently across the session, and remains alive in a way that flat synthetic surfaces do not.

Gold Finishing

Gold finishing is applied throughout the hardware — mechanism, trim, and blade surround. The warmth of the finishing and the cool luminous white of the Mother of Pearl produce the contrast that has organized this material pairing across centuries of use. At the scale of a cigar cutter — an object held close and briefly — the relationship between the two materials is immediate.

The Cut

The guillotine mechanism executes a clean, even cut across the full diameter of the cap in a single controlled motion. The gold-finished blade is sized for standard ring gauges and delivers the cut without tearing the wrapper or disturbing the construction beneath it. The action opens and closes with the smooth, deliberate feel appropriate to the quality of the piece.

Now available at The Tobacconist of Greenwich.