Topic: Is this a Jobling 2497 uranium cigarette box

[chopin-liszt]

You don't want to store the spend ash, but you don't want it flooding the ashtray itself. Full ashtrays stink, are difficult to use and look terrible.
You can either keep carrying them to the bin in the kitchen to empty them, or have a container under it, so it can just be tipped over when it starts to get full and the trips to the kitchen bin are fewer.
It's purely practical, but it does make the ashtray a more complicated and expensive item to produce.

[Lustrousstone]

Apparently between the 1930s and 1950s cigarettes were about 2.75 in (70 mm) long. This is an ashtray with cigarette box http://lustrousstone.co.uk/cpg/displayimage.php?pid=534. See here for the catalogue image https://www.glas-musterbuch.de/Markhbeinn-1932.19+B6YmFja1BJRD0xOSZwcm9kdWN0SUQ9NjYzJmRldGFpbD0_.0.html

[chopin-liszt]

Musterbuch says "Couvercle servier" which translates as "serving cover".

I am sure cigarettes were not kept under the ashtray, but in clean boxes (or even quite fancy things which made individual cigarettes pop up) and any receptacle fitted underneath an ashtray would be for spent ash.

It was the done thing to have cigarettes around in attractive serving contraptions, for guests.
You just wouldn't put them under a dirty ashtray.
Smoking was good for you! Just ask your doctor!

[Lustrousstone]

The first bit translates to square cigarette box; the second bit translates to ashtray lid, which I take to mean is that the lid is an ashtray, not the lid to an ashtray. Older cigarettes would fit in the box just fine.

[chopin-liszt]

They might fit, I just very much doubt that is what it would have been its purpose.
Smoking was an elegant and sophisticated thing to do.
You just wouldn't put or keep fresh ones under a dirty ashtray any more than you'd put your cocktail party vol-au-vents there.
You showed off that you had them available for everybody, in something attractive.

[thewingedsphinx]

I’ve just seen a picture of the catalogue and it quotes “ Cigarette box and ashtray combined.

[chopin-liszt]

That's me told, then. 

[thewingedsphinx]

Sorry about that, just seen a picture in Facebook with these In the catalogue of amber, pink and blue some have more patterning and some none. No pictures in the catalogue of a green one though. Thanks Mike

[chopin-liszt]

I was clinging to my own theory, based on my (very young) childhood memories of all adults smoking, which was wrong. I'm still surprised though.
Glad to have been corrected.