This was a nice Sascha Brastoff find for a thrift store, but as is the case with many recent finds, it didn’t come home with me. Firstly, I just have too many ashtrays in storage. Since I’m not collecting California pottery ashtrays in particular, there was no reason to bring it home. Secondly, it had quite a few chips on it. I’ve been slowly refining my selections at the thrift stores to omit anything that’s chipped or damage. Well, of course, if it’s an exceptional example of pottery, I’ll still pick it up.

This ashtray is rather nice because it doesn’t have that gaudy overload of gold gilding that many of Brastoff’s work exhibits. There are only a few lines of his that I would seriously consider collecting - one is the Abstract Originals line. I wouldn’t mind owning a few examples of this particular “townhouses” line. I’m not sure of the actual name - there is a Brastoff series called “Rooftops”, but I don’t believe this is from that set.