Shabaka - The Pyramid Complication !

Jean Dunand’s latest timepiece combines a perpetual calendar, cathedral-gong minute repeater, moon phase, and power reserve—is particularly distinguished by three turning cylinders that, while displaying the day, date, and month, also evoke papyrus scrolls. Oulevay, who named his company for the Swiss-born artist who thrived during the Art Deco period, expanded on the watch’s Egyptian theme. The 50-year-old executive embellished the dial with two- and three-dimensional pyramid shapes and named the piece Shabaka, after the Egyptian pharaoh who ruled circa 715 B.C. Like Shabaka, who defended Egypt’s sovereignty from the Assyrians and other foreign invaders, Oulevay and his partner in the Jean Dunand venture, complicated movement manufacturer Christophe Claret, remain independent in an industry that has consolidated under conglomerate ownership in recent years. The pieces they create for Jean Dunand—each unique, even within a collection—incorporate groundbreaking complicated movements into designs that reference the Art Deco–era works of the brand’s namesake. Each Jean Dunand timepiece begins with a novel movement conceived by the 44-year-old Claret, whose eponymous watchmaking atelier has developed complicated movements for Harry Winston, Ulysse Nardin, and other premier marques. The Egyptians, too, favored the golden section rule, also known as divine proportion, a mathematical formula for segmenting proportions to create balanced and aesthetically pleasing forms. Despite the watch’s complexity,it is simple to operate because of its locking correctors, similar to chronograph pushers, on the right side of the watch. However, if you own a Shabaka, you may lose some sleep from staying up until midnight each night, or at least on the last day of each month, to watch the day, date, and month displays simultaneously roll over.