A dramatic brass ashtray, its pierced spherical bowl cradled inside a crescent moon form — the moon’s edge worked in a dense repoussé pattern of leaves and flowers, its two points rising to a stylized sunburst finial fixed with a decorative wingnut screw. The bowl is doubly pierced: a fine lattice dome on top and larger crescent-shaped cutouts around the body, originally designed to let smoke draw through and now equally suited to holding cigars or cigarettes at rest. It balances on a fluted, bell-form base with a scalloped, foliate-cast foot.
This is metalware at its most theatrical — the kind of orientalist-influenced brasswork produced for the export market in the late 19th/early 20th century, drawing on Mughal and Kashmiri decorative vocabulary. Equally at home as a smoking accessory or simply displayed as a small sculptural object on a bar cart or console.
