An Epic Exhibition of Ashtrays!
It’s the latest exhibit at the Museum of Dinnerware Design — where you can also try to pull a tablecloth from under a bunch of dishes!
I love quirky museums with oddball themes, so I was excited when I recently heard about the International Museum of Dinnerware Design. The appealingly niche-specific facility opened in Kingston, New York, in the fall of 2024, but I didn’t learn of its existence until about a month ago, when I read a short item about its current featured exhibit, which is devoted to ashtrays.
I was already planning a trip to Kingston at the end of February to see some bands and catch up with friends who live in that region, so I made sure to carve out some time to visit the museum. It’s run by the husband/wife team of Margaret Carney and Bill Walker, who both have deep professional backgrounds in ceramics. They’d been showcasing their huge dinnerware collection by running pop-up exhibits around the midwest for over a decade before recently deciding to open a permanent museum. They looked at a bunch of locations around the country and ultimately chose Kingston, which is a little more than two hours north of New York City. (You can learn more about the museum’s backstory here.)
Although the museum is technically devoted to “dinnerware,” it takes a fairly expansive view of that term. A recent exhibition, for example, was all about picnicware (with most of the objects displayed on little Astroturf patches on the floor!). I was out of the loop for that one, unfortunately, but I was excited to check out the ashtray show, which I saw last Saturday.
