What happens when a talented Swiss designer is also an avid cigar enthusiast? The answer: Izambar – a brand of very special humidors, conceived by Edmond (a nickname he chose for himself after Edmond Dantès, the Count of Monte Cristo) under which he ran a successful cigar blog. The brand is a tribute to one of the 19th century’s great civil engineers from Britain, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who was also an avid cigar enthusiast.
Between projects, Edmond would sketch abstract shapes with a pencil – meaningless forms – until they began to take on clearer shapes. Then, he sat behind his AutoCAD software and created a 3D drawing of his first humidor – Welles, which he describes as follows: “Some might think it’s a safe, or perhaps a UFO that fell from the sky, or a submarine from the stories of Mark Twain.”
Photo by: DGC Studio
In other humidors he created, his great affection for the shades of a cigar’s wrapper leaf is evident. Kipling is a humidor hidden inside a coffee table, an idea that came from his childhood treasure hunt games. In both humidors, the internal parts are made of African oak wood called Okoumé, which has properties identical to Spanish cedar.
