Stefano Ricci SR Porcelain Octagonal Ashtray — Gold Fine Paisley / Gold

Stefano Ricci SR Porcelain Octagonal Ashtray — Gold Fine Paisley / Gold

Gold applied to porcelain is among the oldest and most continuous practices in the history of fine ceramics. Chinese potters were gilding their wares by the Tang dynasty. The Islamic ceramic tradition developed gold luster glazes that produced a metallic surface effect through a complex reduction process applied over an already-fired glaze. When European porcelain manufacture began in earnest at Meissen in the early eighteenth century, gold decoration was among the first techniques developed — applied by hand, fired to fix the metal to the glaze, then burnished to the degree of sheen the design required. Sèvres, Vienna, Royal Worcester, Minton: every major European porcelain manufacturer made gold decoration central to its highest-tier production, because gold on white porcelain communicated what it had always communicated in decorative objects — the pairing of two materials, one pristine and one precious, that together define the upper register of the form.

Stefano Ricci places Fine Paisley in gold on fine porcelain as an SR exclusive design. The paisley motif — intricate, dense, with the tight curved forms of the boteh rendered at fine scale — is executed in gold: the pattern and the ground are in the same tonal relationship as gilded European porcelain at its most refined. The design occupies the 18 × 18 cm octagonal surface as gilt decoration has always occupied fine ceramics — with deliberate restraint, the negative space of the white porcelain as important to the composition as the gold pattern itself.

Gold Fine Paisley

Gold paisley on white porcelain is a monochromatic composition in the most classical sense — single-color decoration on a neutral ground, the relationship between pattern and ground carrying the entire visual weight of the object. The fine scale of the paisley rendering rewards close inspection: this is a desk ashtray, an object held at close range, and the quality of the decoration is fully legible at that distance. The gold of the pattern and the gold of the cigar rest are in complete agreement, the hardware echoing the decoration in the same metal rather than introducing a contrast.

Gold Cigar Rest

Dual gold metal cigar rests complete the composition — gold hardware for a gold-decorated piece. The cigar rest and the paisley pattern share both material and color, giving the ashtray the formal coherence of an object that was designed as a whole rather than assembled from separate choices.

Now available at The Tobacconist of Greenwich.