Objects That I Think About
Ashtray 烟灰缸
我有关烟灰缸最早的记忆是，小时候每当有抽烟的亲戚朋友来家里做客，奶奶会把烟灰缸拿出来摆在客厅的茶几上，为客人和自己点上一根烟。只有这的时候，她的女儿们不会说什么。烟灰缸和水果，瓜子一样，似乎都是招待客人的必需品。有的时候谈天尽兴，烟灰缸里慢慢堆满烟头，果壳和瓜子皮。有的时候会客匆忙，只留下一两只在半截掐灭的烟。
其他时候，烟灰缸会出现在客厅的阳台和厨房的阳台里，厨房抽油烟机的附近，和奶奶的电脑桌上。后来，奶奶和她抽烟的亲戚们陆续生过几次病，住过院，能抽烟的人越来越少。家里的烟灰缸也不知道哪儿去了。
The earliest memory I have about ashtrays is in my childhood. Whenever a relative or family friend visited us, Nai Nai (grandmother) would bring the ashtray out onto the Chaji ( ‘tea table’, Chinese equivalency of a coffee table. Couch height.) in the living room. She would light a cigarette for the guests and then herself. These were the only moments her daughters — my mom and my aunt — wouldn’t say anything about her smoking in the room. I think they might have been one of her happiest moments — to share this mischievous joy with others.
An ashtray, like the bowl that holds fruits and sunflower seeds, is the necessity for a tiny gathering like this. The only difference being, that the first gets filled while the latter gets emptied. Time can be measured by the amount of cigarettes smoked, and the ashtray does a good job visualizing this information. Some guests would stay beyond what the ashtray could hold, requiring a trip to empty it out. Other times the visits were so brief that only one or two cigarette butts were left behind. There was almost never a half-smoked cigarette, just like you would never leave a half-eaten fruit at someone else’s home.
Other times, the ashtray could be found on the balcony, or under the range hood in the kitchen, or on Nai Nai’s computer desk (where she used to play the Majiang game with cartoon Hongkongese celebrities). As time went by, everyone got older and went in and out of the hospital a couple of times. There were fewer and fewer people who could smoke. The last time I went back home, I couldn’t find an ashtray at Nai Nai’s place anymore.
In those memories, ashtrays are always made out of glass or porcelain. They are either round or square, with four notches evenly dividing the circumference of the object. I don’t know where any of the ashtrays at home were from or who bought them, except for two. The first time I could afford buying presents with my pocket money, I bought Nai Nai and my dad an ashtray each at a touristy place. Afterwards, I felt embarrassed for knowing so little of what either of them enjoys more than smoking.
To me, an ashtray is an object of mystery, of sophistication or adulthood. Of mischief. I was never supposed to be its target user, nor have I had the urge to design or make one. Why do I even think about ashtrays and write about them?
I’m interested in an object of a specific use. The size, weight, notches are all there for a reason. They reference the specs of another commercially produced object. Ashtrays are for holding dust, and might be the cheapest souvenir you could get, but they still give a feeling of preciousness. No one wouldn’t smoke just because there isn’t an ashtray, however, no one could resist using an ashtray when being presented with one. It makes you feel taken care of. I’d like to think that ashtrays as a species of object have quietly witnessed a lot of interesting and important conversations, even romantic and historic moments. The richest and poorest people smoke. Dictators and comrades smoke. Ashtrays, sitting in the center of conversations, are quiet facilitators.
Ashtrays are designed in numerous ways. After giving it a brief thought, I have decided I would divide them into three categories. The souvenir ashtrays are sold in tourist gift shops, street vendors in metropolitan cities. Some are branded with company logos, given to their employees whether they smoke or not. Others are branded with hotel or bar information, to be used or sometimes stolen by customers. Souvenir ashtrays usually have the most generic design, with custom decals that distinguish them from each other. They are cheap (sometimes free) and functional. You can buy a ceramic ashtray for $1.44 each, including the price to have your own logo printed. Souvenir ashtrays are unapologetically the products of capitalism.
The second kind of ashtrays are Gimmicks. Ashtrays made to look like other things. Anything! A hat, a turtle, a seashell, a volcano, Squidward, a snake, a naked woman, a pool table, body parts. Lots of body parts. You can flake cigarette ashes into a heart, a skull, a mouth, boobs, an eye, a foot. The classic lung shaped ashtrays, for spreading awareness of lung cancer, and perhaps lung cancer itself.
Finally, there are designer ashtrays. Designing an ashtray is a classic challenge that is not so challenging. It is a fun project that every designer wants to work on to escape from being tortured by other projects. It is a design solely for the self. Among the two ashtray designs by Isamu Noguchi that never got manufactured, he liked one and hated the other. A series of biomorphic, fossil-like forms were explored, however, failing to please himself, he called it “a rehash of every conventional ashtray in the world”. (How dare Isamu Noguchi speak ill about his own design.) The favored design looks like a 5x5 array of bullets inside of a tray for holding a cigarette upright or extinguishing it. A later design by Ettore Sottsass resembles Noguchi’s design. I don’t know If Noguchi’s sketches were public and if Sottsass was inspired. It could also be a coincidence that the two had the same concept to make an ashtray look less like an ashtray.
It is really hard to make an ashtray unfunctional, considering the history of ashtrays is far shorter than the history of smoking. People have been smoking without an ashtray and people still do. We don’t need it, but it’s nice to have it. Smoking can be a luxury and necessity at the same time. Ashtrays add emphasis or commitment to this activity by providing a dedicated time and space with a dedicated accessory.
For Nai Nai, it was a planned solitude, an escape when she was young and anxious, and an escape later in life to reminisce about those times. It was an unspoken comradery with my dad, her son in law, who also smoked, before a major health crisis, against everyone else in the family.
Mirror 镜子
Between 2017-2019 I realized I have spent a lot of time looking into a mirror, or things that function like a mirror. Going through the photos on my phone, there are selfies, mirror selfies - which is comically meta - mirror in a mirror, or looking at my reflection in a reflection. I noticed I wanted to check myself out walking pass a glass paneled building, a dark car window, take picture everytime I go to the bathroom, get dressed or undressed. During those threes years, I also felt scared, lonely, needy, mixed with ecstatic, confident and free. Looking at myself brings reassurance sometimes, other times uncertainty.
-2019, Pittsburgh
Audrey dragged me into a walk at a cementry. I walked pass stones, marbles, and granite with engraved names and date. everything looked heavy, the material, the color black and grey. Even the color white is heavy here. All of a sudden, I saw my own reflection, blurry but recognizable, on a tombstone. I stopped and looked at my reflection. When I started to walk again, I realized I didn’t even pay enough attention to memorize anything about the person that was buried there, yet I remember my reflection. I thought about other times I have noticed my own reflection, regardless of it being blurry, distorted or cropped.
- 2018, Berlin
Coffee Cup 咖啡杯
我有关烟灰缸最早的记忆是，小时候每当有抽烟的亲戚朋友来家里做客，奶奶会把烟灰缸拿出来摆在客厅的茶几上，为客人和自己点上一根烟。只有这的时候，她的女儿们不会说什么。烟灰缸和水果，瓜子一样，似乎都是招待客人的必需品。有的时候谈天尽兴，烟灰缸里慢慢堆满烟头，果壳和瓜子皮。有的时候会客匆忙，只留下一两只在半截掐灭的烟。
其他时候，烟灰缸会出现在客厅的阳台和厨房的阳台里，厨房抽油烟机的附近，和奶奶的电脑桌上。后来，奶奶和她抽烟的亲戚们陆续生过几次病，住过院，能抽烟的人越来越少。家里的烟灰缸也不知道哪儿去了。
The earliest memory I have about ashtrays is in my childhood. Whenever a relative or family friend visited us, Nai Nai (grandmother) would bring the ashtray out onto the Chaji ( ‘tea table’, Chinese equivalency of a coffee table. Couch height.) in the living room. She would light a cigarette for the guests and then herself. These were the only moments her daughters — my mom and my aunt — wouldn’t say anything about her smoking in the room. I think they might have been one of her happiest moments — to share this mischievous joy with others.
An ashtray, like the bowl that holds fruits and sunflower seeds, is the necessity for a tiny gathering like this. The only difference being, that the first gets filled while the latter gets emptied. Time can be measured by the amount of cigarettes smoked, and the ashtray does a good job visualizing this information. Some guests would stay beyond what the ashtray could hold, requiring a trip to empty it out. Other times the visits were so brief that only one or two cigarette butts were left behind. There was almost never a half-smoked cigarette, just like you would never leave a half-eaten fruit at someone else’s home.
Other times, the ashtray could be found on the balcony, or under the range hood in the kitchen, or on Nai Nai’s computer desk (where she used to play the Majiang game with cartoon Hongkongese celebrities). As time went by, everyone got older and went in and out of the hospital a couple of times. There were fewer and fewer people who could smoke. The last time I went back home, I couldn’t find an ashtray at Nai Nai’s place anymore.
In those memories, ashtrays are always made out of glass or porcelain. They are either round or square, with four notches evenly dividing the circumference of the object. I don’t know where any of the ashtrays at home were from or who bought them, except for two. The first time I could afford buying presents with my pocket money, I bought Nai Nai and my dad an ashtray each at a touristy place. Afterwards, I felt embarrassed for knowing so little of what either of them enjoys more than smoking.
To me, an ashtray is an object of mystery, of sophistication or adulthood. Of mischief. I was never supposed to be its target user, nor have I had the urge to design or make one. Why do I even think about ashtrays and write about them?
I’m interested in an object of a specific use. The size, weight, notches are all there for a reason. They reference the specs of another commercially produced object. Ashtrays are for holding dust, and might be the cheapest souvenir you could get, but they still give a feeling of preciousness. No one wouldn’t smoke just because there isn’t an ashtray, however, no one could resist using an ashtray when being presented with one. It makes you feel taken care of. I’d like to think that ashtrays as a species of object have quietly witnessed a lot of interesting and important conversations, even romantic and historic moments. The richest and poorest people smoke. Dictators and comrades smoke. Ashtrays, sitting in the center of conversations, are quiet facilitators.
Ashtrays are designed in numerous ways. After giving it a brief thought, I have decided I would divide them into three categories. The souvenir ashtrays are sold in tourist gift shops, street vendors in metropolitan cities. Some are branded with company logos, given to their employees whether they smoke or not. Others are branded with hotel or bar information, to be used or sometimes stolen by customers. Souvenir ashtrays usually have the most generic design, with custom decals that distinguish them from each other. They are cheap (sometimes free) and functional. You can buy a ceramic ashtray for $1.44 each, including the price to have your own logo printed. Souvenir ashtrays are unapologetically the products of capitalism.
The second kind of ashtrays are Gimmicks. Ashtrays made to look like other things. Anything! A hat, a turtle, a seashell, a volcano, Squidward, a snake, a naked woman, a pool table, body parts. Lots of body parts. You can flake cigarette ashes into a heart, a skull, a mouth, boobs, an eye, a foot. The classic lung shaped ashtrays, for spreading awareness of lung cancer, and perhaps lung cancer itself.
Finally, there are designer ashtrays. Designing an ashtray is a classic challenge that is not so challenging. It is a fun project that every designer wants to work on to escape from being tortured by other projects. It is a design solely for the self. Among the two ashtray designs by Isamu Noguchi that never got manufactured, he liked one and hated the other. A series of biomorphic, fossil-like forms were explored, however, failing to please himself, he called it “a rehash of every conventional ashtray in the world”. (How dare Isamu Noguchi speak ill about his own design.) The favored design looks like a 5x5 array of bullets inside of a tray for holding a cigarette upright or extinguishing it. A later design by Ettore Sottsass resembles Noguchi’s design. I don’t know If Noguchi’s sketches were public and if Sottsass was inspired. It could also be a coincidence that the two had the same concept to make an ashtray look less like an ashtray.
It is really hard to make an ashtray unfunctional, considering the history of ashtrays is far shorter than the history of smoking. People have been smoking without an ashtray and people still do. We don’t need it, but it’s nice to have it. Smoking can be a luxury and necessity at the same time. Ashtrays add emphasis or commitment to this activity by providing a dedicated time and space with a dedicated accessory.
For Nai Nai, it was a planned solitude, an escape when she was young and anxious, and an escape later in life to reminisce about those times. It was an unspoken comradery with my dad, her son in law, who also smoked, before a major health crisis, against everyone else in the family.
Mirror 镜子
Between 2017-2019 I realized I have spent a lot of time looking into a mirror, or things that function like a mirror. Going through the photos on my phone, there are selfies, mirror selfies - which is comically meta - mirror in a mirror, or looking at my reflection in a reflection. I noticed I wanted to check myself out walking pass a glass paneled building, a dark car window, take picture everytime I go to the bathroom, get dressed or undressed. During those threes years, I also felt scared, lonely, needy, mixed with ecstatic, confident and free. Looking at myself brings reassurance sometimes, other times uncertainty.
-2019, Pittsburgh
Audrey dragged me into a walk at a cementry. I walked pass stones, marbles, and granite with engraved names and date. everything looked heavy, the material, the color black and grey. Even the color white is heavy here. All of a sudden, I saw my own reflection, blurry but recognizable, on a tombstone. I stopped and looked at my reflection. When I started to walk again, I realized I didn’t even pay enough attention to memorize anything about the person that was buried there, yet I remember my reflection. I thought about other times I have noticed my own reflection, regardless of it being blurry, distorted or cropped.
- 2018, Berlin
Coffee Cup 咖啡杯