The Ashtray Is Back on the Coffee Table, and No One Is Smoking

They are turning up on console tables and bar carts from Palm Beach to the Hamptons doing anything but their original job: holding coins, loose buttons, a few sticks of incense, the small objects a well-kept room needs somewhere to land. The shape survives because it was never really about the habit — a low, wide dish built for a tabletop, made in materials worth handling. Call it a coin collector or a catchall; it reads as considered rather than nostalgic, and that is precisely why it has found its way back into the American living room.

With reporting from Elle Decor.