Stefano Ricci SR Octagonal Ashtray — Briar Root Blue / Palladium

Stefano Ricci SR Octagonal Ashtray — Briar Root Blue / Palladium

Briar root is an inherently warm material — its natural colors run from pale cream through amber and honey to deep brown, and its associations are with warmth, age, and the pipe-smoking tradition that gave it its purpose. Coloring it blue moves the material decisively out of that register and into something entirely different. The tight burl grain, which reads as earthy and textured in natural briar, reads differently in blue — more mineral than woody, more contemporary than traditional, the same grain structure carrying a different set of associations through the change in color.

Stefano Ricci pairs blue briar root with palladium details and a crystal bowl. The composition is cool from end to end: the blue wood, the silver-white palladium on the brass cigar holders, the transparency of the crystal bowl. Nothing in the object reaches toward warmth. The result is an ashtray with a clear and composed point of view.

Blue Briar / Palladium

Blue and palladium share a tonal register — both cool, both in the range that contrasts with warmth rather than reinforcing it. In the context of briar root, palladium details are the natural complement to a cool-colored wood: where gold hardware would introduce warmth that pushes against the blue, palladium stays in the same chromatic direction, and the piece reads as unified. The crystal bowl at the center carries no color of its own and allows the blue briar and palladium details to establish the composition without interference.

Crystal Bowl

The crystal bowl is the transparent core of the ashtray — clear glass with the weight and formal precision of the material. Against blue briar root, the transparency of the crystal creates a relationship between the colored wood and the pale table surface beneath it, visible through the bowl, that changes how the ashtray reads from above.

2 Brass Cigar Holders / Palladium Details

Two brass cigar holders are finished in palladium — consistent with the cool tonal register of the piece. They accommodate two cigars simultaneously in a 19 × 19 cm octagonal format suited to the desk or occasional table.

Now available at The Tobacconist of Greenwich.