Essence Stick Stand

The V is a right angle, the full width of the bar, with a narrow flat land left along each top edge so the corners do not splinter. A cube set on one edge into a right-angle groove touches it along two faces and cannot rock, which is the whole joint: no pin, no glue. The hole for the stick is drilled in the cube's end face above the bottom of the V, so the stick clears the bar and its ash lands in the groove rather than on the table. The cube is plum marble, honed; the bar is solid teak, oiled, with its grain running along the length.

Teak is the wood for this because it is oily and dense, so smoke and the odd dropped ember leave little mark, and the finish is renewed with a cloth. The marble cube is the one hard, cold thing in the piece and the one that can be swapped: the same stand takes a cube in green or in white, and the cube sits an inch from the back end so the stick has the length of the groove to burn over.

It lives on a shelf or a windowsill, wherever a room is lit in the evening. The detail is the land along each edge of the V: without it the groove would run out to a feather edge that chips the first time the cube is dropped in, and with it the bar keeps two clean lines the length of its top.