Cheik Nadro

2006 Vintage Swatch Watch.

Designed By Frédéric Bruly Bouabré.

Diameter case 33 mm.

Water-resistant 30 Meters / 100 Feet.

Born in the early 1920's into an Ivory Coast farming culture, Frédéric Bruly Bouabré served in the French Navy, worked for the police department in Dakar, Senegal, and held various clerical positions while inventing a 400-character alphabet to write down the oral literature of his people, the Bété. In 1948 he had a mystical vision that inspired him to start his own religion, the Order of the Persecuted. In the 1980's his prolific writing and drawing caught the attention of a French curator, who included him in ''Les Magiciens de la Terre'' at the Pompidou Center in Paris. Mr. Bouabré's work looks like something produced by a combination of folk artist, ethnological cataloger and poet. Taken individually, his many postcard-size drawings, consisting of simple emblematic images lightly drawn in crayon and French texts handwritten around the borders, seem slight; cumulatively, however, they cast a curious spell, part didactic, part mystical. A series of diptychs begun in 1975 and illustrating traditional body markings seems driven by an encyclopediac impulse. The French texts are mysteriously resonant; one reads, ''The adventurers start on their adventures by abandoning their city and their parents.'' Many of the other drawings, mostly from the 90's, are devoted to the discovery of supernatural signs in natural phenomena like clouds, fruit or fish bones. The text around a composition of calligraphic markings, for example, reads, ''Divine writing scripted on an orange skin.'' This may seem whimsical, but one feels in the work over all a sensibility of impressive spiritual vitality.

Brand new never worn, original box and warranty. New battery will be installed before shipping.