Early photographs indicate that Picasso displayed his cardboard Guitar construction both as an independent object and as part of a larger still life assemblage that included paper and wood. A photograph of this arrangement was first reproduced in the avant-garde journal Les Soirées de Paris in November 1913. When Picasso disassembled this still life, he elected to save only Guitar and the curved tabletop he had created to go beneath it. He packed the two components together for storage, most likely in autumn 1916. The rectangular inner body of Guitar, while shaped like a prefabricated box, was made by the artist; the tabletop on which it sits was cut from an industrially manufactured box. The cardboard Guitar's variable modes of installation are characteristic of Picasso's improvisatory, combinatory process between 1912 and 1914.