I saw a commercial ashtray outside a WeWork that had a built-in funnel directing ash into a larger bin. I thought this was a cool design because it allowed people to ash while concealing everyone else’s. When our ashtray broke, I knew I wanted to focus on incorporating this design element into my work with clay.

Additionally, the saddle is largely inspired by Seth Rogen's ashtrays on Houseplant.

With these two design elements in mind, I combined them to create the first iteration of a two-piece ashtray.

In this iteration you’ll notice a change in the way the lid and the body come together. I learned this technique from Florian Gadsby who showed us how he makes a lidded jar on YouTube. He makes his lidded jars with a gallery and flanges that raise and hold up the lid. I think this gives the jar a cleaner and sophisticated look. I recreated his jars on the wheel a few years ago and I wanted to incorporate this design element into the final ashtray as well. Unsurprisingly, my first attempt at doing so didn’t look as clean as his haha.

I also made the saddle flush to the lid on this iteration and made it a lot thicker. Iteration 1 was significantly thiner!

With this iteration, I wanted to see what the piece would look like if it was wider and shorter. I personally really like how short it looks, but functionally it’s not the best when smoking a cigar. Cigar ash really holds together quite well and if it falls down the funnel, it can clog the opening when the body is this short. I had to learn that after using this iteration!

Where the body and the lid meet together has been cleaned up.

I also changed the saddle positioning. When I compared the saddle from iteration 1 and iteration 2, I preferred when the saddle was raised out of the lid instead of it being flush.

Additionally, I added a little stick that helps knock off the ash.

The only difference between Iteration 3 and Iteration 4 is that the body is a bit taller. I honestly thought I was done here, I even made my “final” YouTube video on how I made these with THIS variation and then….

I made this one on accident.

There’s a lot of curves through out the whole piece and one day I made a curve on this iteration where the lid and the body come together. After I did that, I was like “woah….” this looks so much more cohesive! I was really pleased with this slight change and this became the final piece I model future ashtrays off of.