Designer: Louis W. Rice (1872 - 1933)

Item: Sky-scraper Cigarette Box Model 3150

Manufactured by: Bernard Rice’s Sons Apollo Studios

Country of origin: United States

Year made: 1928

Materials: Silverplate and patinated silverplate over brass and wood, possibly cedar.

Dimensions: 1 ¾” x 3 ½” x 4 ¾” 

Description: Here is a rare Louis Washington Rice designed Sky-scraper cigarette or tobacco lidded box in patinated silverplate with its original retailer label from Duke’s Cigarettes in Durham, North Carolina, a division of the American Tobacco Company on the interior.  This rare object was produced in 1928 by the Apollo Studios line, a division of the better known Bernard Rice’s Sons.  The Sky-scraper line of hollow ware included a coffee and tea service, cocktail shaker and accessories, serving platters and trays, gravy boats, other serving objects, candlesticks and dresser or desk items such as hand mirrors and this box.  Finding such an object with its original paper label affixed is rare.  We have only seen a handful of these specific boxes, but we have never seen another with the paper label from the retailer intact.  Fully marked on the bottom as shown.

Examples from the Sky-scraper line have been highly collected and can be found in many major American museum design collections. They are have also been widely documented in most of the important reference books on American modernism, such as the few noted below.

Condition: Very good for its age.  With some minor loss of silverplate on the edges of the corner of the lid from over-polishing, and a small dent on the bottom.

References: Stern, Jewel, Modernism in American Silver: 20th Century Design, Yale University Press, (2005); Johnson, Stewart J., American Modern: 1925-1940 - Design for a New Age, Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers, (2000); Wilson, Richard Guy, Pilgrim, Dianne H., Tashjian, Dickran, The Machine Age in American 1918-1941, Harry N. Abrams Inc, Publishers (1986); Duncan, Alistair, Modernism: Modernist Design 1880-1940, The Norwest Collection, Antique Collectors Club (1998).