Standing Ashtray in Brass with Scrolled Handle and Covered-Vase Finial, Neoclassical Style, Circa 1950

This drawing-room ashtray features a hemispherical dish in polished brass, suspended in a scrolled handle whose upper crossbar is cut in festoons and points. The whole is surmounted by a finial in the form of a gadrooned covered vase, set on a ringed foot. The faceted tapered shaft, punctuated by a baluster ring, rests on a circular ogee base adorned with a collar of radiating gadroons.

This Neoclassical vocabulary — antique covered vase, gadroons, tapered shaft — applied to a smoker's object is characteristic of French productions of the 1950s, when the standing ashtray accompanied club armchairs and sofas in elegant drawing rooms and halls.

Condition report: Good general condition. Brass with a beautiful, even gilt patina, dish sound. Stable structure. A drawing-room object that has become a decorative piece in its own right, perfect beside an armchair, or repurposed as a standing catch-all in an entrance.