Van der Donk

Van der Donk is the last factory in the Netherlands where cigars are still made by hand — that is how an illustrated report presents it, and it is what the entry retains first. It was born in 1919 in Culemborg as Sigarenfabriek Havana, founded by A.W. Smits; a fourteen-year-old boy, J. van der Donk, came to work there, took it over in the 1960s and gave it his name in the 1970s. His son Richard, third generation, runs it today with his wife Gerda, in the Zandstraat, among old machines that suggest a museum and are all in use.

The gesture is that of the Dutch cigar: tobaccos from Cuba, Brazil and Indonesia, their veins removed by hand; a binder placed by hand into a pedal machine that Richard works with his foot; a wrapper — the most expensive leaf, delivered flat — applied by hand. The entry describes this division precisely, because this atlas's line runs between hand and machine, and here the hand does the essential. Nine variants, longer or shorter, thicker or thinner, sold in some forty shops in the country.

There is no successor: when Richard and Gerda stop, the house will cease. This atlas opens the Netherlands as a rolling place for that one factory, and does so before it closes.

Range Depth

• Van der Donk

  Wrapper Sumatra or Brazil · Strength Mild-Medium

  Nine variants of the Dutch cigar — tobaccos from Cuba, Brazil and Indonesia.