Stefano Ricci SR Table Lighter — Briar Root White / Gold

Stefano Ricci SR Table Lighter — Briar Root White / Gold

White is the color that reveals material most honestly. On a figured wood like briar root, white does not produce the rich, saturated effect that red or green produce — it produces something more demanding: the figure of the burl visible as tonal variation within a pale field, the cellular complexity of the root structure legible as shadow beneath the color rather than concealed by it. White on briar root is not the bright, clean white of lacquer on metal. It is a material white — pale but not flat, present but not emphatic, a color that asks the material beneath it to do the visual work.

This quality — material honesty through a neutral color — is what makes white the only colorway available across both hardware options in the briar root table lighter collection. It occupies a different register from the more chromatic colorways: where red advances and yellow glows, white holds its place with restraint, its presence defined by form and material rather than color.

White Briar Root

The white coloring on briar root produces a surface with visible depth — the grain and figure of the burl present beneath the pale color, the natural oils of the wood affecting how the white takes across the surface. Briar root is never perfectly uniform in density, and this variation is what makes the white surface interesting at close inspection. The 7.5×7.5 cm scale of the table lighter is the right scale for this material: small enough that the texture is visible in detail, large enough that the briar root reads as substantial rather than merely decorative.

Brass Lighter / Gold Details

The brass mechanism and gold details warm the white briar root — the pale wood needing the warmth of gold to prevent the combination from reading as cold. Gold against white is a classic pairing in decorative objects, present in fine ceramics, in gilded mirrors, in jewelry: the warmth of the metal making the neutral of the white more luminous. The functional brass lighter mechanism and the gold finishing hardware complete the object consistently.

Now available at The Tobacconist of Greenwich.