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EVERYTHING RELATED TO HABANOS UNLEASHES ILLUSION. BOTH IN CUBA AND OVERSEAS, THERE ARE GREAT COLLECTORS OF ITEMS LINKED TO THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY, MAINLY TO THE WORLD’S FINEST PREMIUM CIGARS

 “The Heritage concept is vast and includes both natural and cultural environments. It embraces landscapes, historic sites, settlements, as well as biodiversity, a number of different artifacts, past and present traditions, and vital knowledge and experiences. It registers and expresses longstanding processes of historic evolution, thus making up the basics of very diverse national, regional, local and indigenous identities. It’s part of modern life. It’s a dynamic reference point and a positive tool for learning and exchanging. Collective memory and the particular cultural heritage of each community or location cannot be replaced. It’s indeed a major baseline for the development of today and tomorrow.”
A brief rundown of the contents in these foundations, reflected in the Letter on Cultural Tourism by ICOM, allows the interpretation of the significance that Heritage has on individuals, society and more especially on experts that work on it. They are taught to pay close heed to complying with the museums’ basic functions: the conservation, protection, research and exhibition of Heritage, since these are the ways these facilities have, either in public places or in the protection of traditions, to keep the fire of a nation’s history and culture burning, thus prompting the interpretation of a society’s material and spiritual values.
Mankind’s existence and evolution are known to have brought along the love for collecting objects, no matter how spontaneous or anonymous that liking has been. As architect and renowned Heritage expert Jose Linares puts it, Renaissance was the stage in which this process ran at full throttle in terms of knowledge and generalization. The practice of it for many years paved the way for the emergence of museums.
There were private collections back them, given the evolution of society, and many of them have had undisputed quality as far as contents and the way of protecting them are concerned.
The collecting of objects related to Cuba’s tobacco industry is no stranger to that aforesaid development. The fact of presenting Cuba’s black tobacco as the very best in the world actually triggers smokers and nonsmokers alike to passionately cherish Habanos and utensils linked to the habit of smoking.
An industry that rose from the small workshop to the big factory, those huge factorial mansions that since the mid-19th century were set up to hand-roll the world’s finest cigars, further prompted the liking for rescuing the cases, the brandings used to stamp seals on the big pine boxes that were then shipped to Seville in an effort to supply the factory whose production was already in full swing since the early 1800s, churning out over 1,000 units of hand-rolled cigars.
Every single piece related to Cuban cigars -the way they were called before getting the name of Habanos- unleashed illusion. As Don Fernando Ortiz, the Cuban sage who delved like no other into our society, once said, “the controversy between tobacco and sugar” was the expression of struggle between two basic products to the Cuban economy.
The metropolis’ ever-growing demand for Cuban tobacco served as a reason for a great need to step up production, a condition that made hundreds and hundreds of factories pop up, many of them with international prestige tacked on them from the very beginning. Branders had a response of their own with rings and bands -the result of the evolution of lithographic art in Cuba- and in the same breath, collectors starting treasuring these paper wonders that were already flooding the entire world.
Vitolphilia or the art of collecting cigar bands is the most widespread of all, since aficionados organize their own exhibits, share and exchange pieces, define the themes that mark their collections and determine how old those artifacts really are. They are, in a few words, faithful and passionate advocates of this art. But the concept gets enhanced and memorabilia, coupled with other expressions of tobacco collecting, joined the conception. Quite a large number of those people augmented their collections with tobacco pouches, smokers’ utensils, matchboxes, documents, bibliography, furniture and other tobacco-related products.
Both in Cuba and overseas, there are great collectors of items related to the tobacco industry, mainly to Habanos. They have thoroughly preserved this wonderful history that enriches Cuban tobacco and avoids it from being destroyed or falling into oblivion.
How can those private collections, with the consent of their owners, be exhibited in certain moments for the sake of society, to be admired and used as educational tools, to enrich the culture of the visiting public, showing them what the history and the art around Cuban tobacco have really been like?
In his work entitled Museology: Introduction to Museum Theory and Practice (1993), scholar Rafael Luis Alonso Fernandez writes: “the museum… of questioned and battled institution… transforms itself into one of the most demanded and coveted sociocultural tools of today’s postindustrial society. It has acquired new parameters of definition, expression and interpretation of the cultural wellbeing.”
In literary works that tackle this matter, they permanently underscore museums as institutions that should socialize this endeavor and its management in a bid to have a much broader public influence and foster information, being this a manner to benefit cultural tourism and achieve enrichment every step of the way.
On the basis of these considerations, it’s easy to comprehend the significance of having Dr. Eusebio Leal Spengler, director of the Havana Historian Office, found on February 26, 1993 the Museum of Tobacco or the Halls of Tobacco Culture, as it’s carved on the façade plaque. And it was founded on one of the busiest and most bustling streets of the former Village of San Cristobal de La Habana, currently the historic core of town, a move that eventually gave a temporary solution –as he put it that day- to the absence of two major museums in Cuba: one on tobacco and another one on sugar.
On the locale marked with number 120 on that same street and flanked by Obispo St., teeming with the colonial history of cigar factories and across from Obrapia St., identified as the mansion that stands right on the corner and harbors a tobacco warehouse on the house next door, visitors will find an 18th-century two-story building that belonged to Bartolome Luque during the colonial rule and later on to other owners in a series of sale-and-purchase operations.
This beautiful house with balconies that overlook Amargura Street on the right side and the corner before the entrance of the Havana Cathedral on the left, turned that temporal character into a shrine for conservation, protection, research and exhibition, let alone the education of visitors eager to learn about the history and culture of tobacco in Cuba.
Collections of piles, tobacco pouches, cigarette cases and holders, ashtrays, humidors, trophies, oil paintings, decorative artworks, bands, rings and brandings, documents, bibliography and other artifacts, are painstakingly and passionately taken care of by a small staff of employees who juggle several hats in the museum, such as ordering, studying, watching and preserving, working day in and day out to keep two exhibition halls and two entrance halls open.
The biggest collection the museum treasures is the one devoted to Lithographic Art, displaying those paper wonder that have spruced up Habano boxes and their cigars.
Bands, rings, lids, nail covers, lapels, leaves, side leaves and fillets, among other elements, stand out as some of the most interesting collectible items. From the oldest lithography to chromo-lithography, the inclusion of the gold leaf in printing works and the use of glitter, metallic powder and other additions are sometimes hard to make out to a naked eye.
It’s clearly visible the happy faces German visitors put on when they notice limestones hailing from their country, as many see for the first time the image of Aloys Senefelder, the creator of this art, carved in a majestic lithographic mural. Something similar happens to French visitors as they stare at the paper labels manufactured in their home nation.
Another major collection is the one dedicated to pipes that, as we all know, were used since prehistoric times. In the course of their evolution, pipes have been built with stones, reeds, bones, metals, wood and other materials, all of them in display in this museum.
Clay, viewed as the right material to build pipes, as well as china clay -among other materials- are showcased in a major exhibit of archeological pipes at the OHC Archeology Cabinet. Two highlights are the ancient pipes donated to the museum by the city historian, together with other wooden pipes built in the 19th century in France, England, Netherlands, Spain and other European countries. And last but not least, the queen of all pipes -according to the Cabinet head curator- built in sea spray of magnesium silicate and hailing from the long-gone Tobacco Museum in Vienna, also sit there.
Different designs and format embellish this collection, even though it’s well known that hand-rolled cigars became the smoke of choice in the 19th century’s Cuba, a reason why some of the cigar boxes -many of them over 70 years old- stand tall in this collection.
At the same time, a sample of tobacco pouches is also significant. Since the 1950s, handcrafters started manufacturing these lovely cases, in a variety of materials, that used to lodge the top-of-the-line tobacco and cigars inside those deluxe containers.
History-laden cigar cases, like the one presented to Juan Gualberto Gomez, delegate of the Cuban Revolutionary Party on the island during the 1895 Independence War; others built in the 20th century and in the early 21st century, show off exquisite marquetry works; the presidential cigar cases and boxes with the Cuban coat of arms stamped on them; and the replica of Fidel Castro’s house in Biran, presented by the former Cuban President himself and donated, among other artifacts, to the Office of the City Historian, are some of the gems the museum boasts.
Other pieces, considered smokers’ items and utensils, show their formats, artistic designs, array of materials, curiosities linked to the way they were built, their dates, brands and everything related to telling the history of this art linked to the smokers’ atmosphere are also shown.
Collaborations made to enhance the museum’s collections have been plentiful through all these years, with good cases in point in the lithography used in some Cuban cigar bands, some of them chipped in by foreign friends, such as Compay Segundo’s hat that was auctioned off during a Habano Festival; the Habano Man of the Year trophy in the Communication category presented to the late Cuba writer Orlando Quiroga; olden jackknives used in tobacco growing; ancient tobacco containers from the H. Upmann brand, or a box with three cigars from the Don Quijote brand with over a hundred years on their wrappers.
The values cherished at the Tobacco Museum of the Office of the City Historian will continue open to the community and to all those visitors willing to learn about the tobacco culture..