Imperlux Frosted White Glass Ashtray with Applied Gilt Cartouches and Gold Banding, Czechoslovakia, c. 1955–1965

The Piece

A low round ashtray with a full, rounded body that swells outward from the base and turns in again at the top — a shape closer to a covered pot than to the flat discs the word ashtray usually calls to mind. The exterior is frosted to a soft matte white; the well inside is glossy opaque white, so the piece reads as two different materials from two feet away.

Two heavy gilt cartouches sit opposite one another on the body, each an oval in raised relief filled with symmetrical scrollwork and edged in a beaded border. They are the whole design, and they are unusually thick — the gold stands proud enough to catch a fingernail. Between and around them the frosted surface is scattered with fine gold mottling, laid on lightly enough to read as texture rather than pattern.

Around the shoulder run three gold bands, one broad and two fine, and the well is rimmed in gold. Four shallow notches are cut into the rim as cigarette rests. The base carries its original gold foil label, still legible.

History & Provenance

The label is the reason to take this piece seriously. It reads IMPERLUX beneath a crown, with HAND MADE and MADE IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA on the banner. According to the Corning Museum of Glass, Imperlux was a trademark held by the Imperial Crystals & China Co. of New York — an importer and distributor rather than a factory — applied to mouth-blown and hand-cut glass brought in from Germany and Czechoslovakia. Corning holds Imperlux trade catalogues dated 1957–58 and 1976–77, which is what places this piece in the third quarter of the twentieth century rather than at a guess.

That means the glass itself is Bohemian. Czechoslovakia's glasshouses spent the postwar decades supplying the American market in enormous volume, and decorated white glass with heavy gilding was one of the things they did better and cheaper than anyone. The frosted body with applied gold relief is a Bohemian formula going back to the nineteenth century, worked here in a mid-century idiom.

What we cannot tell you is which works made it. Imperlux was a brand stamped on imported goods, not a maker's mark, and Corning is explicit that no records survive identifying the factories behind it. The country is certain, the importer is certain, the glasshouse is not.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

Nobody needs an ashtray. That is precisely why this one is useful — freed from its original job, it becomes a small heavy vessel that holds keys by a door, rings beside a sink, paper clips on a desk, or a single fat candle. The notches read as ornament once you stop thinking of them as cigarette rests, and the weight means it stays where you put it.

As an object it does something specific: white and gold together, in matte and gloss, is a combination that lifts a dark surface. Set it on a walnut side table, a black lacquer tray, or a stack of books and it will pull light into the corner it sits in. A note on care: the gilding is applied over the glass surface and the raised relief is the vulnerable part, so wash by hand in warm water with mild soap and dry with a soft cloth. Never use an abrasive pad, a bleach-based cleaner, or a dishwasher — any of the three will strip the gold. If you want to keep the foil label intact, and you should, avoid soaking the base.