The Robusto No.2 Cigar Humidor: An Object of Quiet Luxury
From cigar to Art Deco: the shape that started everything
Every object has an origin. For the Robusto No.2, that origin is the cigar itself.
The design begins, deliberately, with the shape of the thing it was built to hold. Look at the humidor and the reference is unmistakable: evenly spaced vertical ridges run along the top and sides of the piece, their rounded, parallel forms evoking a row of cigars standing upright. This is the silhouette of a robusto cigar, taken as a starting point rather than a coincidence. The cigar came first. Everything else followed from it.
What followed was a translation. That raw, organic form was rendered into the language of Art Deco — the discipline of the 1920s and 30s, when luxury meant geometry, proportion and restraint rather than ornament. The round body of the cigar became a resolved, stepped, ridged profile. The romance of the form became rigour. What was once soft became architectural, without losing its soul.
This is the crucial move of the Robusto No.2: it does not borrow Art Deco as a style and then happen to resemble a cigar. It takes the cigar's shape as its first principle and translates it into Art Deco. The Deco language is the lens, not the subject. The subject is always the cigar.
Place it in a room and both readings are present — the cigar and the era, the object and its reference. It does not imitate; it abstracts. This is what a cigar looks like once an architect has thought about it.
An architect's instinct, at the scale of the hand
The Robusto No.2 belongs to the second series of GB cigar humidors — a set of three distinct models, each translating the idea of the cigar in its own architectural language. All three were shaped by a background in architecture, and that training is visible in every decision they make. They think in volume. They resolve in elevation. Their proportions are not approximate — they are considered the way a facade is considered, the way a well-drawn section is considered.
Each model answers the same question — how do you give the cigar a worthy form? — in a different way. The Robusto No.2, which this article is devoted to, translates the cigar's shape into a stepped, ridged profile dressed in Art Deco. The Sublime takes a different architectural risk: it appears to float, suspended in mid-air between two glass legs, as if the humidor itself were released from gravity. And the Double Happiness draws its inspiration from elsewhere entirely — the Chinese ligature 囍, the "double happiness" character — and carries that idea into a pure cylindrical form, echoing the rounded body of the earlier Delight humidor.
Three objects, three forms, one shared first principle. But it is the Robusto No.2 that I keep coming back to — the most direct translation of the cigar into architecture, and the piece that most clearly wears its inspiration on the outside. The rest of this article belongs to it.
That architectural instinct is exactly what made the translation from cigar to Art Deco possible. Art Deco, at its best, is architecture applied to objects — and the Robusto No.2 is architecture miniaturised and made intimate, a piece you can hold, open, and live with.
The exterior: metallic lacquer, stainless steel, chrome
The body of the Robusto Edition No.2 is finished in metallic lacquer, which gives its clean, rectangular form a deep, light-responsive quality. The blue edition is perhaps the most striking — rich and layered under low light, precise and cool in daylight — but the finish reads differently in every colour, changing with the room and never looking the same twice.
On the front, a stainless steel lid handle provides the single point of contact — the moment the hand meets the object. Cross-shaped and brushed to a silver finish, it sits as a geometric focal point against the lacquered body. It is substantial, precise, reassuring. Details like this are where luxury reveals itself: not in the flourish, but in the thing you touch every day.
On both sides, the GB logos appear in chrome finish — the maker's mark of Genco Berk. They are restrained, never loud, unmistakable only to the eye that lingers. They function as a signature that sits in the design rather than on top of it.
The interior: Spanish Cedar, and a logo that breathes
Open the lid and the Robusto No.2 shifts from statement to instrument. The interior is lined throughout with Spanish Cedar — the wood that serious humidors are built around, prized for the way it holds humidity, resists the warping that ruins lesser woods, and contributes its own subtle aromatic character to the cigars within.
The trays are produced in Spanish Cedar solid veneer, and here the design reveals its most refined gesture. Each tray carries a laser-cut GB logo pattern — a lattice of precision-cut openings that runs through the veneer. This is not decoration. Those openings allow humidity to circulate more freely between the trays and the humidor's interior, so that air moves, moisture equalises, and every cigar on every level is held in the same balanced condition.
This is the moment I find most compelling about the piece: the brand mark is doing real work. Form and function stop being separate ideas and become the same idea. The logo, in effect, breathes.
Capacity: three levels, 250–280 cigars
The Robusto No.2 is a humidor of real ambition. It stores between 250 and 280 cigars, arranged across three separate levels — three trays, three tiers, three chances to curate a collection thoughtfully, by brand, by vintage, by mood.
This is the capacity of a humidor built for someone serious about their cigars: not a display case for a handful of favourites, but a working repository for a collection still growing. And because the humidity circulates through the laser-cut tray pattern, that scale never comes at the cost of consistency. Every level is as cared for as the one below it.
An object that earns its place
The Robusto No.2 is, ultimately, two things at once — and it does both of them completely. On the outside, a sculpture: Art Deco in spirit, its ridged surface echoing a row of cigars, metallic in finish, signed in chrome. On the inside, an instrument: Spanish Cedar throughout, trays engineered for airflow, room for over 350 cigars held in honest, even condition.
It belongs to the second series of GB humidors for a reason. That series was conceived by a mind trained in architecture — a mind that understands volume and proportion, and the quiet authority of a form that has been properly resolved. The Robusto No.2 is perhaps the most direct expression of that thinking. It begins with the shape of its subject, the cigar itself, and translates that shape into Art Deco — giving it a home worthy of the name.
For the collector who has outgrown the ordinary box, it is — I believe — exactly the right object.
Specifications
Model: Robusto Edition No.2
Series: Second series of GB cigar humidors
Form: Rectangular body with vertical ridges running along the top and sides, evoking a row of cigars; form derived from the cigar and translated into Art Deco
Exterior finish: Metallic lacquer (available in four colours, including blue); stainless steel cross-shaped lid handle on the front; GB logos in chrome finish on both sides
Interior: Fully lined with Spanish Cedar
Trays: Spanish Cedar solid veneer with laser-cut GB logo pattern for improved humidity circulation
Capacity: 250–280 cigars across three separate levels
Dimensions:
Metric: L 54 cm / W 32 cm / H 23 cm
Imperial: L 21.7" / W 12.6" / H 8.7"
