Elie Bleu Casa Cubana "Palacio de la Revolución" Ashtray

Elie Bleu Casa Cubana "Palacio de la Revolución" Ashtray

The ashtray is the destination. Every other object in a cigar accessory collection — the humidor, the lighter, the cutter, the case — serves a step in the sequence that ends at the ashtray: the cigar resting between draws, the ash deposited and forgotten, the experience accumulating in the object that receives it all. In the Elie Bleu Palacio de la Revolución collection, the ashtray carries the same architectural marquetry as the humidor and the table lighter — tinted sycamore, mother-of-pearl, and the palette of mauves, purples, and blues that the craftsmen of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine workshop drew from photographs and memories of Havana's facades. The object that ends the session looks like the objects that began it.

Casa Cubana / The Palacio

The Casa Cubana collection takes the architecture of Havana as its subject and the craft of marquetry as its method. The Palacio de la Revolución — the former presidential palace, now the Museum of the Revolution — provides the specific subject: the building whose columns, domes, wrought ironwork, and allegorical angel have become among the most recognizable symbols in Cuban cultural history. That building appears across the entire limited edition of 199 pieces, on every object in the collection, in the same palette of tinted wood and mother-of-pearl iridescence. The ashtray is the final piece in that set — the object at which the cigar's story ends.

The Complete Set

To build a complete Palacio de la Revolución smoking environment is to place five objects in conversation with one another: humidor, table lighter, ashtray, and two cigar cases. All five share the same marquetry design, the same palette, and the same limitation to 199 numbered pieces. The ashtray functions as both a working instrument and a decorative object in that set — present on the table when cigars are being smoked, and worth looking at when they are not.

Now available at The Tobacconist of Greenwich.