Troika Ashtray England 1960s

Troika ashtray in brown and bronze glaze. Designed for Heals, London in the late 1960s. Factory marks to base. Signed by Avril Bennett. These ashtrays are more commonly seen in white and bronze.

Very good condition, slight wear to glaze around the rim of the ashtray from use.

Troika Pattery was established by Benny Sirota, Leslie Illsley and Jan Thompson in St Ives, Cornwall in 1963. The studio relocated to Newlyn in 1970s and remained producing ceramics there until its closure in 1983. The early, more experimental phase, strongly influenced by ceramic designs from the era from Scandinavia, can be associated with the St Ives period and was marked at its high point by an important exhibition at the Heals department store in London in 1968. The later, more recognisable, rough textured glazed piece on standardized shapes with modernist motifs derived from the Cornish landscape, are more typical of the later period in Newlyn after 1970.