It seems to me that I do remember making one, but if I did, I have no idea what I would have done with it, because none of the significant adults in my life smoked.
@Mangetout did that recently. And cooked in the results.
8 video playlist.
I don’t remember ever doing pottery at school. We made soda can lamps in high school wood shop. 1980s.
Yup. Ugly, as many other have said.
Heck I’m old enough that there were ashtrays in the halls of grad school. The rumor was that when the building was opened, the dean lit a smoke at the front door and walked through the building and wherever he needed to ash they stuck an ashtray. Dude smoked fast, so there were a lot of them.
Related story, while I was still in school they banned smoking in the halls, so the ashtrays were removed. To be promptly replaced by soda cans taped to the walls. Students had quite a bit of unsupervised time in that building.
I remember ash trays on airplanes – when it was still legal to use them. The ones I remember were all in the armrest. I think having them on the back of the seat in front of you in a lecture hall speaks of the days before “coeds,” when students were men, and men wore short hair. Otherwise I expect it might be pretty dangerous for the person in front.
Once using the ashtrays on the plane was prohibited, all of those little ashtrays in the armrests were gradually filled up with fossilized chewing gum.
I definitely made ashtrays for my parents as a kid. My mom didn’t quit smoking until around 2006, when I was in my 30s. My dad never stopped until his death, but I had not been in touch with him anymore for a long time by then. Mostly I painted ceramic ones, but I probably made some out of clay, too.
I had baby sitters who smoked – openly, and my parents knew.
I don’t remember making any ash trays, but it’s entirely possible that I did and don’t remember it.
Even people who didn’t smoke would have ash trays in their homes in case they had visitors who did smoke. My parents never smoked, but I think we had an ashtray or two around the house somewhere. I don’t know whether it/they ever got used (for their intended purpose, as opposed to something like keeping pennies and paper clips), but if so, it wasn’t often.
I made them in school and at camp. My mom took up ceramics as a hobby and made a ton of them. They lingered around the house long after my dad (the only family smoker) quit.
My mother was a heavy smoker, and my brother* did make an ashtray at art class for her. He painted it red, and it was used for at least five or so years before it finally crumbled beyond use.
I seem to recall that when we played with clay at school we did have the option of making an ashtray, but as we already had one, I think I must have made something else on offer. I don’t remember what it was, and I think, for whatever reason, they never got fired and were dumped.
Mum did give up smoking eventually, but long after I had grown and we kids had all left home, so by then it wasn’t benefiting us. A bit annoyed that it didn’t happen ten years earlier.
*or possibly my sister, can’t remember
I never made one out of clay, but I did make one with ceramic tiles in a form. I suspect it was a kit.
Yeah, I forgot about the one made from tiles. That sat on the coffee table for years.
As an aside, my wife was astonished by how much smoking was in the movie Maestro. Including right after a cancer diagnosis.
She’s younger, and I said that when I was a kid everyone smoked like chimneys.
Every newscaster smoked on the air. Huntley and Brinkley turned the air grey in the studio. Remember the Beatles’ recording sessions? Same.
Even McDonald’s had ashtrays on every table… they were like a thick aluminum foil, colored gold and pressed into the ashtray shape, with the arches embossed in the center. I would always take a spoon or a coin and burnish the logo flat, then draw on the backside to make a different “embossed” logo… usually for Burger Chef (their rivals across the street).
Huh. I had forgotten about those.
Don’t recall a clay tray, but in cub scouts we took small square clear glass ashtrays and glued stamps to the underside of them so you could see the faces of the stamps thu the tray. Think I still have it in my box-o-junk.
Neither parent smoked, but it was fine for sticking coins and small objects in.
I remember what happened. They were all dried in the sun, left outdoors over a weekend, and most of them broke, mine included.
You just described the ashtray I made for my dad at that age in uncanny detail.
I never made ashtrays at school, but I did make a couple of them at the local YMCA crafts room. They gave you a square metal basin and little square pieces of ceramic material to glue in. The finished product looked pretty good!
I must have been around nine years old at the time.
When I arrived at UCSD in 1975, the lecture halls still had ashtrays on the backs of the seats; approximately every third seatback had one. But smoking in classrooms had just been banned.
Fair point, though my parents were the mid-70s weirdos who didn’t let guests smoke inside the house. If they wanted to light up, they had to go out on the deck. Uncommon for the era, to be sure.
I did make an ashtray or two in my youth, but I don’t remember when, or where.
I do remember making a “World’s Greatest Dad” pencil holder in kindergarten, then proudly giving it to my dad for Father’s Day. Dad proudly displayed it on his desk, making me even prouder! Then one day I tore it to pieces in a fit of rage, when I got mad at Dad for some stupid reason. I still feel bad about that 6 decades later.
I also made a fine wood jewelry box for Mom in Middle-School wood-shop, but I never put hinges on it, or varnished it, as I was supposed to (I was a procrastinator). But Mom liked it none-the-less…or so she said.
That brings back bad memories of the shop teacher, who I’m fairly sure was a former Nazi SS trooper. He used to grill us on wood-shop related questions, then make us sing a song in front of class when we got the wrong answer. I still wake up in a cold sweat with nightmares of singing about penny nails in front of a hostile audience. Talk about PTSD!
I accidentally made an ashtray in high school. I had managed, over a period of weeks, to gouge, chisel and sand a really poor fruit bowl. When I took it home I just dumped it in my bedroom and went out. When I came home my parents were using it as an ashtray. I was quite pleased.
Wow, you guys had some cool art classes. We had crayons and paper. Clay? Hah! Summer camp? No way - no money. So, no, I never made clay ashtrays, tho my dad did smoke on and off till the early 70s.
But I did weave some righteous pot holders on a square metal loom.