Stefano Ricci SR Octagonal Ashtray — Briar Root Green / Gold

Stefano Ricci SR Octagonal Ashtray — Briar Root Green / Gold

Erica arborea — the tree heath of the Mediterranean basin — grows slowly on dry, rocky hillsides across southern France, Italy, Spain, Algeria, and Morocco. Its root burl develops underground over decades, building the density and silicate structure that makes briar root the wood that pipe-makers have always chosen: it is naturally heat-resistant in a way that no other commercially available wood matches, dense enough to hold its form under sustained use, and marked by a burl grain that is unique to each piece. The wood of the root is not wood in the conventional sense — it is a burl, a growth anomaly, and the grain patterns it produces are the direct result of decades of slow mineral accumulation in difficult soil. Coloring it green returns something of the color the plant had above ground to the material that grew below it.

Green Briar

Green briar root is the most botanically connected of the colored options in this collection. The pigment works through the grain rather than over it — the burl figure visible beneath the color as the texture it actually is. Against gold hardware and a crystal bowl, the green briar introduces the cool, verdant register of the natural world into a composed object: a piece that has both color and character.

Crystal Bowl

The central bowl is crystal — transparent, weighted, and formally precise. Crystal is the material of the cellar and the dining table, the decanter and the wine glass, brought here to the smoking table as the vessel for ash. Its transparency against the colored briar root creates a visual contrast that is part of the object's design logic: the natural and the refined, the pigmented wood and the clear glass, occupying the same form.

2 Brass Cigar Holders / Gold Details

Two brass cigar holders with gold details accommodate two cigars. The 19 × 19 cm octagonal format is a personal ashtray — sized for the desk or side table, for one session or two smokers — rather than the four-rest centerpiece of the larger porcelain series.

Now available at The Tobacconist of Greenwich.