Stefano Ricci SR Dual Flame Lighter — Nail Polish Blue / Gold

Stefano Ricci SR Dual Flame Lighter — Nail Polish Blue / Gold

Blue has been one of the most difficult and therefore most prized colors in the history of decorative arts. The Egyptians ground lapis lazuli to produce it. Medieval manuscript illuminators used ultramarine — literally "beyond the sea," because the lapis that produced it came from Afghanistan — at a cost that rivaled gold. The discovery of Prussian blue in the early eighteenth century was an event in European painting history. Synthetic ultramarine changed the economics of blue pigment entirely in the nineteenth century, but the cultural weight of blue as the color of rarity and precision survived the democratization of its production. Blue objects — really, deeply, saturated-blue objects — retain the feeling of deliberate intent that the color accumulated over millennia of being difficult to achieve.

Stefano Ricci applies nail polish to this lighter in blue. The choice of medium is precise: nail polish is formulated to achieve maximum saturation and depth at small scale, exactly the scale of a lighter body. The result is a blue with genuine chromatic richness — not the flat blue of a painted surface but the layered blue of a lacquer that has been built up for depth.

Blue / Gold

Blue and gold is a pairing with a pedigree: the colors of lapis lazuli and gilded bronze in Egyptian decorative objects, of cobalt-blue Sèvres porcelain with ormolu mounts, of ultramarine skies behind gilded halos in Renaissance altarpieces. The relationship between the colors is one of contrast — the cool chromatic precision of blue against the warm continuity of gold — and that contrast gives each material more definition than either would have alone.

Dual Flame System

The lighter operates with two flame modes — soft flame for table use, torch flame for outdoor conditions. Both available from a single piece.

Now available at The Tobacconist of Greenwich.