Seth Rogen has a 567-piece vintage ashtray collection. It started with a hedgehog
If your perception of Seth Rogen begins and ends with his scruffy stoner/schlubby Everyman persona, you might be surprised to find out that the actor, producer, comedian and cannabis-brand entrepreneur is also an ashtray aesthete of the highest caliber and owner of a massive, museum-worthy collection of seriously stylish ashtrays from days gone by.
Rogen's collection was amassed over the last two and a half decades and is heavy on colorful Midcentury Modern ashtrays. He thinks his approximately 567 pieces might possibly be the world's largest collection of vintage ashtrays. (The arbiter of such things — the Guinness Book of Records — doesn't distinguish between vintage or nonvintage in recognizing an Australian man's 1,560 pieces as the world's largest ashtray collection.) But even without that superlative, it's an impressive collection, comprised of pieces from the Golden Age of ashtrays, the period from the 1920s through the late 1970s during which exceptional craftsmanship was focused on what's essentially a miniature fireproof trash can.
Although most of Rogen's collection has been meticulously cataloged and placed in storage, a few dozen pieces, including lantern-like ceramic ashtrays designed to hang from tree branches and stackable mini-ashtray sets in a rainbow of colors, are on display at the Hollywood offices of Houseplant, the cannabis and housewares brand launched by Rogen and longtime friend Evan Goldberg in 2021. At those offices is where, a few years back, I first became aware of the massive cache of ash catchers.
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And it's at that cottage-style space, part showroom and part Midcentury Modern VIP party pad, with a turntable near the fireplace and Houseplant accouterments and ashtrays dotting every available surface, that Rogen met me on a recent summer afternoon to highlight a handful of his favorite pieces and talk about how to share the collection more widely with the world. (An interactive ashtray exhibition, anyone?)
Walter Bosse stacking hedgehog
Rogen's favorites include a couple of pieces designed by Viennese ceramicist, sculptor and metalworker Walter Bosse (1904-79). The most novel is from the mid-1950s and appears to be an adorable brass hedgehog figurine. That is until Rogen, with all the flourish of a magician, unstacked the hedgehog's bristly back onto the table on front of him.
The result? A series of six individual brass ashtrays.
"I love the combination of practicality and design," Rogen said about why it's a favorite. "And the fact that it's [designed] for social occasions — it's very much about being with people, hanging out, and it normalizes smoking." To emphasize the designer's practicality-meets-design approach, Rogen gestured to another Bosse creation, this one a hand-shaped brass ashtray with forefingers poised mid-pinch. "The Bosse ones are just sculptural," he said while pointing out the fluid shape of the fingertips. "And you can put a joint right there, and it looks like it's holding the joint.
"I became really fascinated and enamored by the idea that ashtrays used to be unabashedly made by people who put a lot of thought and time and energy into them," Rogen said. "And that's why all the ashtrays I was buying were Midcentury Modern — because they're from a time when people put a lot more creative thought and energy into smoking, because smoking cigarettes used to be much more in fashion and people didn't know it was bad for you."
Louis Vuitton hand-painted ashtray
Another favorite — and one of the two pieces Rogen said turned him from simply a user of utilitarian ashtrays into a collector of especially stylish ones (the other being the Bosse hedgehog) — is one he found on online antique marketplace 1stDibs. ("I think it was like 20 years ago. I'm terrible with dates," he said.) It resembles the kind of shallow bowl in which you might serve guacamole or candy but for two things. The first is a generous, pear-shaped indentation to hold a lit cigarette or cigar. (Houseplant co-founder and chief executive Mikey Mohr, who has helped add to the collection over the years, calls the notch "the philosophical dividing line between candy dish and ashtray." And he's not wrong.)
The second is the iconic floral monogram pattern associated with a certain storied French fashion house. "This is a hand-painted Louis Vuitton ashtray," Rogen said as he proudly held it aloft.
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This sparked a side discussion about fashion-brand collaborations, during which I asked Rogen about his dream Houseplant high-style partnership. What if Louis Vuitton or Gucci came calling for a 21st century smoking accessory reboot? "Yeah, they'd be fun to work with," he said. "We'd be interested in working with any brands that would elevate people's experiences."
To prove his point, he mentioned a collab with stylish New York-based streetwear brand Kith that had dropped online a few hours earlier: exclusive-to-Kith versions of a Houseplant grinder, a marble rolling tray set and a candle. "That's why Kith was such a big deal for us," he said. "[Founder] Ronnie [Fieg] is a friend of mine and he does such amazing things in that regard."
F.W. Quist Smokny ball ashtrays
"These were a staple I used for years," Rogen said of the colorful orbs with chrome lids on the counter between us. "[The shorter ones] are made by a German company called [F.W.] Quist, and it's a pretty clean design. What I like about it is that there's a [lip] to put your joint on, and then when you flip the lid back, the ash empties into another little compartment that's out of sight."
Danish Modern armchair with built-in ashtrays
Rogen had this sleek, stylish blond wood and chocolate leather armchair carted from his home to the Houseplant offices to share as one of his favorites. "I don't know who designed this chair honestly," he said. "I think when I bought it, it was just listed as 'Danish ashtray chair.'" (An image search of the interwebs turned up a likely candidate: Danish company Domino M?bler, which made a Scandinavian armchair with an ashtray in each armrest.) In addition to the midcentury style Rogen is a fan of, the chair has something else he appreciates: The two metal ashtrays are removable from the wooden armrests, so they can be easily cleaned.
Chalvignac standing ashtray/Houseplant standing ashtray
"I bought the first one of these on EBay," Rogen said of a standing Maurice Chalvignac ashtray that looks like the lovechild of a dumbbell and a Q-tip. "This one is from Canada, and one of the things that I love about it is that [the top] comes off so you can clean it easily. At some of these old companies, people really put a lot of thought into these things.
"We had some of these midcentury standing ashtrays around, and people really, really responded to them," he added. "So we created a prototype." He gestured to the end result next to the Chalvignac: an L-shaped piece of metal holding an upside-down cone of smoke-colored glass.
It's Houseplant's take on the standing ashtray and it sells for $295.
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Another Houseplant offering — a stacked set of three stoneware ashtrays ($80) — similarly traces its DNA to a stacking Ceramiche Giulianelli set from Italy that sits on a nearby shelf.
"We made the bowl a little deeper and the look more modern, but it was definitely an inspiration," Rogen said. "As someone who comes from movies, you unabashedly allow yourself to be inspired by the things that came before you. And all of our favorite things [are a result of] people taking things that they love and interpreting them through their own [lens]."
An interactive ashtray exhibit?
Given how enthusiastically he shared every last detail of his favorite pieces with me, I couldn't help but ask him if he'd ever considered sharing more of his collection with a wider audience, perhaps in a museum-like setting.
"I think an interactive exhibit would be amazing," he said. "That would be such a fun way [to get] at it. The most interesting thing to me is that these ashtrays are the perfect example of form meets function. They serve a purpose and they can be beautiful enough that you'll want to display them. Especially because they were created for something that now has a bummer stigma [cigarette smoking] but can now be used — and appreciated — in a different way for something without that stigma [weed smoking].
"As someone who makes things," Rogen said, "I'm always amazed that sometimes those things are not used how you intended them to be used. That doesn't make them bad. It's a part of the creative process that I think is interesting."
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
