S.T. Dupont Line 2 Havana Dreams — City of Cuba

S.T. Dupont Line 2 Havana Dreams — City of Cuba

There is a particular light in Havana. It comes off the painted facades of the colonial buildings — the ochres and terracottas and pale blues that line the streets of Old Havana — and off the chrome and bodywork of the cars that have been driving those streets since before most of the people in them were born. It is warm, slightly theatrical, the kind of light that makes everything look like it was designed to be photographed. Travelers who have been to Havana come back talking about that light. S.T. Dupont's City of Cuba lighter captures the street-level experience of a city unlike any other.

Printed Lacquer / The Street Scene

The Havana Dreams collection uses S.T. Dupont's printed lacquer technique — the Maison's method of rendering full color, scene, and atmosphere on a lighter panel with the precision that conventional engraving cannot match. On the City of Cuba lighter, the artwork depicts Havana's streets as they exist on the ground: classic American cars from the 1950s, colorful colonial architecture, the urban texture of a capital that has been preserved, more or less intact, for the better part of a century. The scene is not a historical reconstruction. It is Havana as it still looks — which is precisely what makes it remarkable.

Yellow Gold / Micro-Diamond Guilloché / CLING Technique

The City of Cuba lighter is constructed using the CLING technique — S.T. Dupont's method in which the guilloché is engraved first, then the lacquer applied over it, so that the artwork has a structural foundation beneath its colored surface. The micro-diamond head guilloché on the frame provides not just visual texture but the substrate over which the lacquer scene is laid, giving the surface a depth that flat printing cannot replicate. The yellow gold finish completes the composition: warm, legible, consistent with Havana's own palette.

The Perfect Ping

Opening the City of Cuba lighter produces S.T. Dupont's Perfect Ping — the Line 2's defining acoustic, a sound as much a part of the object as the image on its face. A U.S. exclusive from the Havana Dreams collection.

Now available at The Tobacconist of Greenwich.