Elie Bleu Casa Cubana "Palacio de la Revolución" Table Lighter

Elie Bleu Casa Cubana "Palacio de la Revolución" Table Lighter

The table lighter is the stationary member of the cigar ritual: fixed in place, reached for at the moment the cigar is ready, returned to its position after the light is taken. In the Elie Bleu Faubourg Saint-Antoine tradition, it is an object that earns its place on the table through the quality of what it is made of and what it depicts — not merely a fuel reservoir and ignition mechanism, but a piece of decorative craft that holds its corner of the room as a humidor holds its shelf. The Palacio de la Revolución table lighter carries the architectural marquetry of the collection's humidor onto the surface of a table lighter: tinted sycamore, mother-of-pearl, and the palette of mauves, purples, and blues that Elie Bleu's craftsmen drew from the facades of Havana.

Casa Cubana / Palacio de la Revolución

The Casa Cubana collection was built around a single premise: that the architecture of Havana is material for marquetry. Each piece in the collection takes a building or an element of the Cuban capital and renders it in the inlay tradition Elie Bleu has practiced since 1976. The Palacio de la Revolución — the former presidential palace, now the Museum of the Revolution — is the collection's most historically charged subject. The marquetry interpretation of its facade uses the same materials and the same palette across every piece in the series: the lighter and the humidor share a visual language, making them legible as a set even across the distance of a room.

Table Presence / The Right Moment

A table lighter of this quality is not reached for indifferently. It is part of the ritual's opening sequence — the cutter in hand, the cap removed, the lighter lifted from its position and brought to the foot of the cigar. The Palacio de la Revolución lighter performs that function with the weight and finish the occasion deserves, then returns to the table as an object worth looking at between uses. Limited and numbered to 199, it is part of a complete set: the humidor that stores, the lighter that ignites, the ashtray that receives, the cases that carry.

Now available at The Tobacconist of Greenwich.