David Hockney|Ceramic Ashtrays

The ashtrays are a small, accessible corner of Hockney's collectible editions, and a fitting one for a committed smoker who has always adamantly defended smokers in public. In 2014 he illustrated 'Unlucky Strike', John Staddon's book against smoking bans, and in its foreword asked of his own habit, "Why stop now?".

Pictures on bone china

Salts Mill in Saltaire, which showed 'A Year in Normandie' in 2022, published 'A Year in Normandie Ashtray' with a detail of that work. The full picture joins more than 200 iPad paintings, made at his Normandy home in 2020, into a single composite. The detail on the ashtray shows a red-roofed barn beside a tree in blossom. Salts Mill's second ashtray, 'Water Lilies in the Pond with Pots of Flowers Ashtray', reproduces '10th – 22nd June 2021, Water Lilies in the Pond with Pots of Flowers', which Hockney made from six iPad paintings joined as one work. Both Salts Mill ashtrays were hand cast and decorated in Stoke-on-Trent. The Royal Academy of Arts issued 'Vide Poche', a hand-cast fine bone china ashtray. Its French title names a small tray for emptying one's pockets into.

The pool

'Swimming Pool Ashtray' was made for the Manchester showing of 'David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away)', Lightroom's immersive exhibition of his work. The show ran at Aviva Studios from December 2024 to January 2025. The swimming pool became one of Hockney's central subjects after he arrived in Los Angeles in the 1960s, from 'Picture of a Hollywood Swimming Pool' in 1964 to the 'Paper Pools' of 1978.