DAMIEN HIRST - LIMITED EDITION ASHTRAY
DESCRIPTION:

You are bidding on a ultra rare and very scarce brand new white ceramic ashtray produced by artist Damien Hirst.  It is approximately 4" in diameter and 1.25" in height.  It has an image of used cigarettes sikscreened to the bottom of the ashtray.  It has never been used.  I can't find another one for sale anywhere or any images online of this particular edition, but it was obviously produced in very limited quantities.  The Hirst logo is silkscreened to the bottom of the ashtray along with a copyright notice and the Pharmacy restaurant logo.  Also along with the ashtray comes an authentic Damien Hirst totebag (see pictures).  

Pharmacy was a restaurant in Notting Hill, London, which opened in 1998. The venture was backed, in the early days, by Damien Hirst and the public relations guru, Matthew Freud. It gained further publicity thanks to a dispute with the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain which claimed the name and the pill bottles and medical items on display could confuse people looking for a real pharmacy. The name itself was breaching the Medicines Act 1968, which restricts the use of "pharmacy". The restaurant's name was subsequently changed to "Army Chap", and then "Achy Ramp": anagrams of "Pharmacy".  However, initial plans to open further restaurants outside London were quietly dropped and the restaurant itself closed in September 2003.

Cigarettes are a recurring feature in Hirst’s work. He explains their appeal: “The whole smoking thing is like a mini life cycle. For me, the cigarette can stand for life. The packet with its possible cigarettes stands for birth, the lighter can signify God, which gives life to the whole situation, the Ashtray represents death […] being metaphorical is ridiculous, but it’s unavoidable.  Hirst once also said, “I think an ashtray is the most fantastically real thing.”  Between 1995 and 1997, Hirst made four ashtray sculptures: ‘Horror at Home’; ‘Crematorium’; ‘Necropolis’; and ‘Party Time’. ‘Party Time’ (1995) was the first to be exhibited, in ‘No Sense of Absolute Corruption’ at Gagosian Gallery, New York, in 1996, whilst ‘Horror at Home’ was included in Hirst’s major solo show at The Saatchi Gallery in 2003. Explaining that artists “make art from what’s around them”, the sculptures magnify an ashtray to a diameter of eight feet. Each sculpture has one, two, three or four cigarette rests. The works contains over fifteen bin bags of remnants collected from the ashtrays of The Groucho Club, the London club Hirst frequented in the 1990s.  The ashtray sculptures emerged after Hirst witnessed human’s futile attempts to “reduce the horror” of smoking. He relates the absurdity of going to the beautiful house of a wealthy friend and finding a “tiny little ashtray ... you could only fit about three cigarette butts in it, then they’d empty it”.

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