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A table clock in the form of an elephant, hand-carved from chalcedony on a lapis lazuli base, fitted with an Omega movement. One of one.
A functioning table clock and a sculpture at once: the elephant is carved from chalcedony, the dial driven by an Omega movement, the whole mounted on a lapis lazuli base with bronze plated in gold vermeil. The animal carries the hours on its back — timepiece and creature in a single object.
Chalcedony is the cryptocrystalline form of quartz — silica in fibers too fine to see — which gives it a smooth, waxy translucence and a Mohs hardness near 7. The base is lapis lazuli, the deep ultramarine rock prized since antiquity, its lazurite blue flecked with gold pyrite set against the soft pale body of the elephant.
The elephant stands across cultures for wisdom, memory, strength and good fortune — and it has carried clocks before, most famously in the medieval water-clock automata of al-Jazari. Here the lineage is rendered in carved stone, the elephant once again made the bearer of time.
Luis Alberto Quispe Aparicio is a Peruvian-born lapidary sculptor and creative director of L'Aquart, heir to a family atelier whose tradition reaches back to 1968. An engineer by training, he gave the bench what engineering could not match; his carved works are held in museum collections worldwide, and since 2010 he has collaborated with S.T. Dupont on Haute Création pieces. His practice insists on harmony between lapidary carving, metalwork and structural planning — and on refusing difficulty as a reason not to proceed.
Surround Art & Diamonds — North American representative of L'Aquart — presents this work as a singular object at the intersection of lapidary art, fine craft and collecting, with nearly a decade placing Quispe Aparicio's sculptures in private collections across the United States and Europe.
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