Yeah, I made an ashtray. 1st or 2nd grade (1965-66). A mutant fish, light blue or teal. I remember recognizing at the time (or shortly after) that (1) it really was ugly, and (2) it was quite useless because neither of my parents smoked.
Except for that brief time when Dad tried smoking a pipe. Oh, God, the reek! Fortunately, that didn’t last too long.
Yeah, was old enough. Didn’t make one though.
I did make a head where you would put one of those incense cones in the mouth, and smoke would come out of it’s ears.
I was a creative, if odd child.
I vaguely remember a homemade ashtray around our house, but my dad had almost given up smoking by the time I was born (and he never smoked indoors) so it would have been used for storing miscellaneous junk.
We had a large glass ashtray that we used for holding shells if we were eating sunflower seeds indoors.
I’m of a correct age, but actually don’t remember making ash trays although I’m sure I did. More likely, none of mine ever made it past the firing, glaze & presentation to Mom stage between a lack of skill and enthusiasm. I have a memory of our 7th grade art instructor warning us not to make bongs or bowls including the ole “Here’s my clay submarine (with a bowl inside)” trick someone always tried.
My Chicago suburban high school still had a legitimate smoking section outside the exterior cafeteria doors for age 16+ students to grab a drag after eating or in the morning before class. This was 1987-1989 before it was closed down.
I attended two elementary schools in the '50s and '60s, and both had kilns for firing clay art pieces. I wonder how many elementary schools have their own firing kiln these days?
Yup, I made one in 4th grade, 90’-91’. My dad smoked (still does) but I’m not sure if he ever used it. I haven’t a clue if he still has it.
My SIL, who just turned 50, made a drink coaster thing in grade school specifically for smokers: it was basically a layer of small match boxes glued between two ceramic tiles. Each match box had a little brass brad for a “pull”. Neither of her parents smoked but her dad still uses it to this day, some 40 years later. It’s stood up amazingly well considering it’s fundamentally a core of thin cardboard sandwiched between cheap ceramic and has been used to hold a heavy beer stein every day for 4 decades.
I’m still in contact with the woman who taught my 4th grade class to make ceramic ashtrays all those years ago – she made Labdad’s custom shot glass some a year or three ago.
Yep, it was wide and bright green and had the impression of a leaf in the middle. I don’t think it was ever used, even though Mom smoked at the time. They still have it. It’s awful 
As an aside, the father of one of my elementary school classmates worked at a bronze foundry. They donated sculpting wax to the art class, and everyone got their submissions back made in bronze.
Again, the stuff I made was awful. A pencil cup (not quite tall enough to actually adequately hold pencils), a big letter A for Andrew, and a weird looking cartoony fish. I still have all of it. At least they make good paperweights.
I was four or so, playing with clay with an older playmate in his basement. He began to roll out long columns of clay, announcing that he was “making a girl’s wiener.” Innocent of female anatomy, I accepted the premise and we spent the idle hour making girls’ wieners aplenty.
(This friend proved an inexhaustible source of childhood corruption. Once, as we pawed away in the sandbox, he sang “my brother lies over the ocean / my sissy lies over the sea / my mommy lies over my daddy / and that’s how they got little me.” His mother barked his name from the kitchen window in rebuke).
A year or so later it was time to make ashtrays in anticipation of Fathers Day’s approach soon after schoolyear’s end. I fell back on the technique of rolling out the clay and then building a coil that spread to a pad with gunwales, instead of the finger-mushed depressions of my classmates. Years later in college I learned that this was an ancient technique used by Native American potters.
But there was no glazing and firing for us, only globby dents of dried dirt. Mine couldn’t long withstand the tapping of my dad’s pipe, and the longest known girl’s wiener in art history would not achieve family heirloomdom.
Yep, I made them. My parents smoked, but all of the ashtrays I made were intended for me. They had their own ashtrays, and didn’t need mine (I started smoking at 13 or so).
My first one was just a giant mushroom of clay thrown on the wheel with a cylinder hollowed out in the middle. If you’ve ever thrown on a wheel, you probably know the shape I’m talking about. Even though I figured I’d wedged out all of the bubbles, the teacher refused to fire it because she just didn’t think a block of clay that huge wouldn’t explode in the kiln. I used it for several years. It was a good ashtray, even it it was really, really heavy for the number of cigarette butts it could hold. If noting else, it took a really dedicated effort to upset it. The only more stable ashtray I’ve seen was one made out of the bottom of a (IIRC) 9" artillery shell.
When I got to college, I graduated to making pretty ashtrays. I was studying fine arts, and there were a lot of electives you could take that were in disciplines where you could make something practical with the materials and it wasn’t seen as misuse by the instructors. If I really couldn’t come up with an idea for demonstrating the next technique we were learning, I’d sometimes make an ashtray. I’m actually kind of proud that I only made one in ceramics class. It was a slab of clay shaped with a sheet of canvas and a box. It was a giant, rustic, cobalt blue and white glazed butt bucket that I think I might have had to empty once every two weeks. IIRC, I got an A on that project. I think I still have it in one of the boxes around here, but we haven’t used it in years.
I know I still have the other one I remember making. It’s sitting on my desk right now. It’s a plate of copper that I hammered into a dish and then coated with an art deco-ish powdered enamel pattern in jewelry class. I think I got a B on that one. Looking at it now, I kind of deserved it. The back is gorgeous, but the front is too messy to pull off the art deco idea I was trying. Oh well, it still makes a good ashtray.
Ha! I completely forgot about those. They were common in my parents kitchen. Handprints in clay and then painted garish colors was also popular. Spirograph deals on color board with various threads, made into geometric designs. Hey, it was the ‘70s, people stared at stuff like that for hours.
I remember seeing a lot of homemade ash trays. I may have had a arts project in school.
I got involved in Ceramics for several years. A local place sold greenware and offered work space to prep it. They fired it for us. Ash trays were a common ceramics project.
At my school, around November, they had us do a hand-print on a wooden plaque, and turn it into a Thanksgiving turkey (the thumb became the turkey’s head, the fingers became the tail-feathers).
I was too young for ashtrays to even be an option.
Neither my husband nor I smoke, but when we moved into our first house in 1982, we were quite worried when we realized we didn’t have any ashtrays for smoking guests! It was common to smoke in other people’s homes. No one batted an eye. So of course, I purchased a couple of ashtrays immediately. I remember the day after a get-together, our house would reek of stale smoke. I can’t believe we were ok with it back then. I don’t remember when we came to our senses, but at some point we made the rule of no smoking in our home.
I remember family get-togethers as a kid and there would be a foot of smoke hovering on the ceiling. Then my mother would light some candles…
To help with the smoke 
Although I do not use tobacco, I have several ashtrays. One evening someone stopped over to talk to my gf and they smoked. My gf asked me to go get one of my ashtrays for the guy to use.
He did not see the humor in the ashtray.
+1 for eyerolling Jesus.
Yup. My parents didn’t smoke, and my father was vehemently against smoking; but when we had people to visit, they put out ashtrays. It would have been considered incredibly rude, in the 50’s and 60’s and for some time thereafter, to tell guests that they couldn’t smoke in the house.
And I also don’t remember whether I personally made any ashtrays; but it was certainly a thing that some kids did.
I made one in metal shop in 9th grade (1965 - 66). A nice one, with a holder for the cig on the arm. My mother had quit smoking years before and my father sometimes smoked cigars so it wasn’t all that useful, but it was a doable project.