Cigarette snuffer with stylized bird

October 2024

This time an almost forgotten object: the cigarette extinguisher. In the twentieth century, this inconspicuous little instrument was commonly used to push out smoldering butts in the ashtray without smearing your fingers. That custom fell into disuse when the cigarette manufacturers first introduced the filter and a little later by adding chemicals to prevent the cigarette from smoldering. In the current era, in which smoldering cigarette butts are only feasible in the domain of addicted smokers, this object has completely disappeared from view. This 1930s version of a bird, in which you can see a pelican with some imagination, is one of the last extinguishers for the upper-bourgeois environment. Nice to know that this bird spent its working life in the ashtray of the former director of our Rijksmuseum, Arthur van Schendel. His father, the famous writer of the same name, was in contrast to his son an avid pipe smoker.

Amsterdam Pipe Museum APM 24.768

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