Dimensions (cm): 10 x 5 x 8

Year: 1950's

Alfred Dunhill Ltd is a British-based company specialising in men's luxury leather goods, writing implements, lighters, timepieces, fragrances and clothing. The business was developed in 1923 by Alfred Dunhill after he inherited his father's saddlery business on London's Euston Road. Alfred Dunhill, responding to the growing demand for cars, developed a line of luxury automobile accessories called 'Dunhill's Motorities'. This first collection included car horns and lamps, leather overcoats, goggles, picnic sets and timepieces. He gradually changed direction by focussing on making gadgets based on the art of cigarette smoking, recognizing that a high quality, practical and yet decorative lighter was essential alongside the other accessories.

In the 1950's Dunhill introduced a brand of lighters called the Aquarium, which is basically a table lighter. These new lighters were manufactured from Perplex which has been used to carve the interior of the lighter to produce a decorative scene. The carving ended up being filled in with colour to make a number of motifs, the first being the Aquarium. No two 'Aquarium' lighters are the same - each is, in its way, a unique work of art. The vast majority, logically, depict aquatic scenes, of either sea-water or fresh-water fish (but never both). A very small number of lighters depict non-aquatic scenes - hunting, horse-racing and aviary subjects in particular. All designed and hand-made by Ben Shillingford (1904-2000), whose unique skills in designing, carving and hand-painting the Perspex panels could never be equalled. Upon his retirement, the skills necessary to continue to manufacture the 'Aquarium' lighter could not be found, and production ceased after only a few short years at the end of the 1950s.

Bar Code: 10023