The Best Ashtrays to Instantly Make You Seem Worldly and Full of Character

FINALLY! It’s Ashtray Season. We know it by the influx of sunshine, crop tops, and trailing outdoor bar conversations. It’s the sound of springtime cuties flapping in their Adidas pool slides to your patio, BBQ, the park, or whatever slutty functions you have planned—and it has us jazzed to refurbish the lot of our ~social~ home decor, from versatile sex furniture to culinary entertaining. (ISO international snack boxes? Same.) We need new patio furniture (well, OK, not need, but these finds for under 100 bucks would be nice), and we want a new catchall for our joints, cigs, and incense; plus hand sanitizer, more joints, and keys. We don’t need cool ashtrays, we need the coolest ashtrays—ones that deliver such a vibe, they can sub in for what we lack in personality.  

You don’t have to smoke, well, anything, to own a sexy-cool ashtray. But if you do, doesn’t ashing in a slab of hunky marble make all the difference? (And if you’re this deep into a VICE article on the best ashtrays and catchalls, you definitely know at least three smokers.) Doesn’t tap-tapping that joint into a ceramic cowboy hat spark joy? We want the kitsch, the clever, and the terribly chic on rotation for our smokin’ aesthetic. 

This ceramic ashtray doubles as a beautiful centerpiece to put beside your copy of Virgil Abloh’s Taschen book. 

This one must to go front-and-center of wherever, because as long as it gets front row in your home, it will say the absolute most whilst you say the absolute least (you’re busy, and the cat won’t lasso itself). Smoke enough pot and it will tip its hat and whisper sweet, Western cattle tales into your ear.

Aside from looking like a 1940s spaceship, this vintage ashtray has three symmetrical platforms for holding your joints, and ample space for ashing so you don’t have to get up, and break the vibe during those late nights to dump the sludge.

We would die in a vat of pink Champagne cake from the Madonna Inn, a storied mid-century resort in San Luis Obispo, California that you may recall from our ode to the kitschiest roadside hotels in the US. And it’s all about the colored Mosser glass at the Madonna, from their signature wumbo goblets, to the come-hither, bathing lady ashtrays/soap dishes.

Well, isn’t that rather precious. We almost feel bad, smoking out this lil egg bro. But we know he’s a hard chiller, too. Wake and bake? Yoke ‘n toke, my guy.

You’re the fun friend with the VIP wristbands. (Also, maybe the one who loses their phone at the festival.) This is basically an adult kaleidoscope, ready to trip you out on that shine the next time you smoke, but it would also look great as a rainbow-reflecting catchall for your thingamajigs. Imagine what a flex it would be, to load this up with luxury condoms.

This pink marble ashtray looks like it could’ve come from any number of warm weather, Mediterranean villas we’ve seen in a summer romance movie. Pairs best with a bottle of Spanish wine, a lackadaisical Moka Pot, and a book that goes over our heads.  

Put matches, joints, tumbleweed nugs, and anything else you want in this Acacia wooden vessel, which is the zenith of *muah* that 1970s A-frame home aesthetic we pine for every day.

A hunk of creamy marble that’s fit for a mobster’s cigar, but will have to settle for our lumpy joints. FR though, this shade is the perfect backdrop for gold earrings, keys, and a pack of Marlboro Lights.

We get it! You like kinky shit, but in a Freemason way. So of course your ashtray is a glass snake, and of course that snake is Italian. “[This piece was] inspired by the snake iconography of 18th-century prints,” reads the seller’s description, “[and] the vices are represented with their double aspect: irresistible temptation and lethality.” LOL. But also...hot.

We love people like you. We need people like you, because you are our favorite kind of ambiance director: You come prepared to party with your Guy Fieri-wear, tiki glasses, cocktail recipes (including those with non-alcoholic and adaptogenic spirits). Of course your ashtray is a trip way down to Kokomo.

Amazingly, this piece will function just as well in a number of scenes: the coven, the kitsch bar, and the obligatory present of that one person who still has Caddyshack floating around somewhere on VHS.

There are only a couple hundred of these cool ashtrays in the world, so if you’re looking to build up a serious design collection, this is a squiggly, wiggly, 1980s place to start. “The Squash Gold Ashtray in ceramic was originally designed in 1985 by Maria Sanchez,” explains the seller, “[and] the Squash ashtray is one of the smallest objects in the Memphis Milano collection.” Almost too good to ash in, but basta! That’s what we came here for. So perhaps make it a pseudo-altar centerpiece.

This is an ashtray, but it is also a shrine to the Almighty Dive of sentences like, “A man is not a necessity. A man is a luxury. Like dessert.” We pay homage to her with this humble, sparkling catchall.

“Hey, can you not ash over there? There’s a perfectly good crouching drawing overlooking a quartz pool to your right.” TYSM, Elder Foggernaut.

That’s the bottom of our smoking goody bag, for now. Don’t you dare put that thing out in a mug again, when there are dragons and boobs to be had.  

The Rec Room staff independently selected all of the stuff featured in this story.