Elie Bleu Casa Cubana "Palacio de la Revolución" Humidor — 110 Cigars

Elie Bleu Casa Cubana "Palacio de la Revolución" Humidor — 110 Cigars

The Casa Cubana collection began with an observation: that the architecture of Havana is singular in the world, a composition of Spanish colonial grandeur, neoclassical proportion, and Caribbean color that exists nowhere else in quite the same way. Each humidor in the collection takes one building from that cityscape and translates it into marquetry — the craft of Elie Bleu's Faubourg Saint-Antoine workshop, applied to the subject matter that defines Cuban culture. The "Palacio de la Revolución" — the former presidential palace on Calle Refugio, now the Museum of the Revolution — is the collection's most monumental subject: the building that housed the presidency of Cuba, now the keeper of the island's history from independence through revolution and beyond.

715-Piece Marquetry / Eleven Woods and Mother-of-Pearl

The marquetry that renders the Palacio de la Revolución across the humidor's lid and sides requires 715 individual pieces. The wood essences — eleven in total — are joined by mother-of-pearl, the material whose iridescence introduces a quality of light that no wood alone can provide. The palette is unusual for marquetry: mauves, purples, and blues drawn directly from the faded, sunlit tones of Havana's facade finishes, colors that shift with the angle of light in a way that references the tropical light of the city they represent. Tinted sycamore carries the main fields; green redgum provides the contrast and depth; mother-of-pearl catches the light at the edges and within the architectural details. Gilded and silver metallic transfers complete the composition, picking out the columns, wrought ironwork, domes, and architectural openings with a precision that approaches relief sculpture.

The Angel and the Flag

The figure that animates the Palacio facade — an allegorical angel carrying the Cuban flag, drawn from a fresco inside the former presidential palace — appears throughout the collection as its emblematic image. It is a figure that existed in the building before Elie Bleu encountered it, a symbol of freedom placed there by the building's original occupants and carried forward into every subsequent chapter of the building's history. On the humidor, that figure is rendered in marquetry alongside the architectural composition, connecting the decorative surface to the meaning the building holds in Cuban cultural memory. The interior continues the reference: engraved with the architectural lines of the building and a fresco-inspired motif, the inside of the humidor is as considered as its exterior.

110 Cigars / Three Storage Levels

The interior of the Palacio de la Revolución humidor accommodates 110 cigars across three storage levels, supported by two removable trays for organizing a collection by vitola, brand, or sequence. Two humidifiers maintain the humidity environment; a needle hygrometer provides the reading. The construction, as with all Elie Bleu humidors, uses Spanish cedar for the interior — the wood that regulates humidity, resists tobacco beetle, and imparts the secondary aging effect that makes a humidor a meaningful part of the cigar experience rather than mere storage.

Limited and numbered to 199 pieces. Available with matching limited-edition accessories: table lighter, ashtray, and cigar cases in the same Palacio de la Revolución design.

Now available at The Tobacconist of Greenwich.