Vintage Au Louvre Trinket Dish

This glazed ceramic ashtray (or little vide-poches) carry the charm of interwar Parisian design. Made for Au Louvre, Paris in 1925, it borrows from the bold geometry of the Art Deco period: stepped edges, sculptural corners, and lettering that turns advertising into ornament. Au Louvre (or Grands Magasins du Louvre) was one of Paris’s great historic department stores, founded in the 1850s and closed in 1974. Like other grands magasins of the period, it sold fashion and household goods and became known for extending its brand into everyday decorative objects—like these charming advertising ashtrays / vide-poches. As keepsakes, it evokes a very particular Paris: elegant, commercial, and tactile—when department stores sold not just goods, but a whole world of taste. Today, they work just as well as trinket trays for rings, matches, or desk treasures as they once did as ashtrays. Dimensions: (12cm x 12cm)