Designer: Richard Rohac (1906 – 1956)

Item: Ashtray with Snuffer

Manufactured by: Richard Rohac

Country of origin: Austria

Year made: Late 1940s

Materials: Patinated and unpolished brass

Dimensions: Tray is 1 ¼” x 3” x 2 ½”  and snuffer is 3” x 5/8” x 5/8”

Condition: Excellent

Description: Another very fine, well executed patinated brass work by Richard Rohac.  This set is heavy and well cast and rivals the overall quality, craftsmanship and design of the work by Carl Auböck, but at a much more reasonable price point.  Both the ashtray and the snuffer are fully marked with the reverse Rs and “Made in Austria” as shown in the photographs. This is a very scarcely found model and we have never this exact model. A related set is found in the only existent known Rohac catalog that has the same snuffer but in a different ashtray, as shown. The three leading metal workshops (Werkstattes) in Vienna during this period, Auböck, Hagenauer and Rohac all produced ashtrays with snuffers (Gluttöter) used to extinguish cigarettes and cigars.

This is likely an immediate post WWII object because patination was used to obscure the impurities in the brass that was used by melting down shell casings from spent munitions. This was a method also utilized by the Hagenauer and Auböck shops because of the scarcity of materials. The unpainted sections shows slight tonal differences that are the result of using this less pure brass.

Rohac was a master metal craftsman who began and completed his apprenticeship with the Werkstatte Hagenauer in Vienna, Austria as a teenager and stayed with the workshop another nine years before opening his own metalwork business in 1932.