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

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

The boteh — the original Persian form of the shape known in the West as paisley — is a curved, teardrop form that has been interpreted in decorative arts for more than two thousand years. It appeared in Sassanid Persian weavings, in Mughal court textiles, in the Kashmir shawls that became the luxury trade good of the eighteenth-century European aristocracy, and in the mechanized Paisley, Scotland mills that produced an affordable version of the same pattern for a broader market — and gave the motif the name it carries in English. That the pattern survived all of those translations — Persian court to Mughal workshop to Scottish mill to contemporary luxury goods — is a testament to its formal logic: a shape that has movement, rhythm, and a kind of organized energy that flat geometric patterns do not produce.

Stefano Ricci places Fine Paisley on porcelain in green. The choice of color is precise — green paisley on white porcelain has a clarity that the pattern's density benefits from, each element legible against the ground, the fine rendering of the design visible at the 18 × 18 cm scale the ashtray occupies.

Green Fine Paisley

"Fine" in the product name refers to the scale of the rendering — the paisley motif executed at a level of detail that requires close inspection to fully read. The pattern is not a broad, simplified version of the shape but a tight, detailed one, the kind that rewards the proximity that a personal desk ashtray invites. Green on porcelain white carries the pattern without the heaviness that a darker ground would produce.

Gold Cigar Rest

Two gold metal cigar rests are set into the porcelain — the format of a personal ashtray sized for the desk or side table. At 18 × 18 cm the piece is a desk object or a side table object rather than a social centerpiece, and the single rest reflects that context. The gold of the metal and the green of the paisley are opposite on the color wheel — complementary in the formal sense — and the relationship between them is active rather than neutral.

Now available at The Tobacconist of Greenwich.