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Elegant and Majestic Humidors

Raul Valladares

Raul Valladares is both a silversmith and a sculptor. He only builds humidors for the Festival auction and in rare occasions.
“All in all, there’s only been a few. I’m a sculptor, not a humidor maker, though I’ve been building them for over 20 years and making them gives me great pleasure. They are refined, elegant and majestic. They are so special to me that I always give them a very exclusive character when it comes to creating and building them,” he comments.
Creator of the Cohiba humidor, he admits the ones built for this flagship habano brand are always futurist and beautiful, very much in sync with his work. Valladares dearly recalls the one he built to pay tribute to Alejandro Robaina. “I put so much passion, love and effort into it. It was a great piece of work, a humidor turned into a sculpture intended to remember the history of this great tobacco planter,” he says.
From his standpoint, Cuba makes the world’s finest premium cigars, a reason why their containers must be up to par with the quality of this product, both in terms of functionality and beauty. “A cigar is a piece of craftsmanship, handmade by master rollers. Humidors are the house, the palace or the shrine where they rest, where these national products are preserved. Can you imagine what does a humidor built by Cuban artists, containing habanos made by Cuban rollers actually mean? That’s a genuine and perfect combination,” he goes on to say.
“This year I made the statuettes for the Habano Awards to be handed out during the Festival, the same sculptures used by Habanos S.A. to recognize the big boldface names from the realm of habanos,” he concluded.

A Romantic Creator

Jose Ernesto Aguilera

Back in the 1990s, Jose Ernesto Aguilera had a passionate flair for silversmith works. His dreams were aiming high as he thought of huge and embracing pieces, with murals and complex elements. “Back in those days I realized that a cabinet, like a humidor, could actually make my dreams come true,” he says.
Then he discovered wood in its most intimate ways, featuring “incredible nobility ingrained in it,” he adds. “Then I realize those silversmith works I was so passionate about were not larger than this nobility. So, at that time wood and metal began to complement those dreams I had and eventually they grew to become parts of each and every one of my artworks. That’s how I found an incredible and magical place in which I established a bond between my way of thinking, my fantasies and my reality, all that much pieced together into those pieces of furniture.”
He says for this year’s festival he’s planning to showcase some works he’s done in recent months, including the first piece of a new series entitled “Treasures of Cuba”, which has to do with characters engaged in everyday life; humble, modest and picturesque people that sometimes go unnoticed.
Another standout is a replica of the Bacardi Building. “It’s an honor to do a piece like this because of the tremendous impact it has on the city of Havana,” he avers.
Furthermore, he’ll come up with another piece he calls a fantasy related to the Montecristo brand. “It’s a very intimate cabinet, so the owner will get a piece full of fantasy and creativity. I’m trying to merge the brand’s history with the plot in the Montecristo Count novel, but through a version of my own in which Edmund Dantes had some sort of cigar roller table. He used to sit down at it and cook up his best his vengeance plans there.”

Colonial Houses

Neury Alberto Santana

It’s been 19 years since artist Neury Alberto Santana came up with his first house-shaped coffers, resembling the ones built in Cuba during the Spanish colonial rule, thought up to keep items, documents and habanos.
However, since then he’s been honing his expertise and delving into the realm of habanos, recreating the colonial buildings of the past in each and every humidor he makes.
In his humidors, Santana shows the façades of cigar factories and other buildings that let customers not only safeguard his habanos, but also enjoy a couple of elements from the national culture: tobacco and architecture in a decorative and functional combination.
Backed up in this effort by architect Jasmer Cotarelo, plus two young relatives he passes on his mastery to, this artist who studied woodworks, mechanical designing and civil engineering, chases his dreams inspired in “the possibility of creating a humidor that can really hold a candle to habanos and contributing with my artworks to the fundraiser that every year pours money into Cuba’s healthcare system.”
For this festival, he’ll be presenting two humidors: one for the H. Upmann brand and another one for Partagás. As to the tradeshow, he will bring coffers for the Colonial, San Ignacio, Don Diego and Habana lines, large enough to accommodate between 50 and 100 habanos each. What’s more, he’ll also bring samples for the Trinidad and San Cristobal brands.

DECUBA for the World

The building of humidors in this ongoing century introduces major challenges for handcrafters. The solitude of yesteryear has been replaced by teamwork. In 1995, DECUBA, from the westernmost province of Pinar del Rio –deservedly called the birthplace of the world’s best tobacco- is a team of 35 artists and artisans led by Luis Milian.
Milian says the teamwork clinches unity, intelligence, complementation, and larger outputs in terms of response and efficiency.
Considered an expert in the making of humidors, he teamed up with another celebrated artist: Luis Ramirez. This year he’ll be taking the Hoyo de Monterrey humidor to the Festival’s traditional closing auction. “Complementation is the key and will be more necessary with each passing day,” he says.
Ramirez indicates that for this year’s edition he was invited to work for Sargadelos, a Spanish porcelain-making company. This time around, they showed interest in having a piece of furniture built for keeping their items. “I thought it would make sense to design a humidor since everything is going to be exhibited as a whole, so it happened,” says Milian, a man who’s been working for these events for years and runs a good workshop where top-quality humidors are built. “That’s why we decided he was the one to build this year’s humidor.”
As to the piece itself, he adds “it’s completely made of Cuban cedar and enriched with details that look back to the history of the brand. Based on a contemporary design, its well-articulated geometry makes reference to the simplicity and elegance of the habano boxes, with dovetails, screws and stainless steel inlays providing value-added contributions worth feasting eyes on. The interior is fitted out with a number of drawers with all their accessories, while the bottom –usually unused- features some sort of rack for wine bottles. As an addition function, the dome on top hides secrets only the owner could ferret out.”

No Limits to Creativity

Moises Gonzalez and Marlene Acosta

Moises Gonzalez and Marlene Acosta make up a couple of artists that since 1998 found in Cuban wood and humidors the possibility of etching their works in a variety of formats, from a simple bas-relief all the way to a 3D sculpture. When it comes to complexity, no limits or barriers stand in their way.
“Once we stepped into this elite world so full of demanding collectors, we’ve been driven to put exquisiteness into what we do,” Gonzalez points out.
Their joint efforts in this job prompted their love for the arts. The two of them carve wood with different techniques. They decided to join both sculpturing and inlaying, and the result has been an exquisite blend of artworks that get increasingly better with as time rolls on. Their works have been exposed in different events and exhibits where they have grabbed prizes and awards.
Humidor making is very important to them because “they are part of the Cuban culture, not only to preserve our precious cigars, but also to protect and continue a tradition that’s part of both our history and culture. These artworks are enriched with images of our countryside, our cigar factories and our farmers,” they add.
Whenever this couple creates a cabinet with these features “we always take a risk because creation in itself is a challenge until you get the job done.” He says. “I mean, it can never be the same and that’s pretty important to us.”
For this year’s festival, they will present a collection entitled “Habaneras”, made up of five sculptures that represent the presence of women in the tobacco industry. “The night of the auction we’ll bring a piece inspired in the Romeo y Julieta brand, a very romantic work in which we recreate the brand from the view of the Cuban cultural identity.”