Pyramid Scheme

Here at Boxes and Booze we seldom get boxed in, and certainly not into a corner.  Take a standard cube, for example, with its six faces, eight vertices and twelve edges.  If we cut off all the corners, we have an entirely different object – a cube octahedron or a vector equilibrium, to name a few names.  The inherent “cube-ness” of the object remains, though, depending on how you slice it, and the six “sides” that make up this cube take on their own interesting polyhedral shapes.  So it’s not much of a stretch (is it?) to consider a perfect pentagonal  dodecahedron which is named “Pyramid”.  What I mean is, consider the dodecahedron – a polyhedron with twelve perfect pentagonal faces (and twenty vertices and thirty edges).  It would be possible, depending on how you sliced it, to reveal the inherent “cube-ness” in such an object.  Just imagine an actual cube sitting perfectly inside the docdecahedron.  Now separate each piece of the dodecahedron along the planes of the cube faces.  Slide one of the sections off entirely and you will be holding a pyramid.

Pyramid Box by Hideaki Kawashima

The Pyramid Box by Hideaki Kawashima represents a full circle of craft, creation, invention, reflection, and recreation by this Karakuri Creation Group artist.  His very first puzzle box for the group was the “Regular dodecahedron box”, consisting of six turning sides built in the shape of a dodecahedron, with a minimum of six moves required to open.  It took over 8 years and over thirty puzzle box designs for him to develop the skills and insight to finally create the box he had originally envisioned.  Pyramid box is that achievement, an homage to his first box and a realization of his vision.  The mechanism for Pyramid is identical to his POD box, which takes its name from the design on its surface plates.  This was so that no hint was given from the name itself.  That concept is taken even further in the Pyramid version, which does away with any visual clues on the puzzle itself as well.  Pyramid is elegant, brilliant, extremely challenging and so easy to get lost in as you navigate the many moves needed for it to open.  It is a masterwork of design, a worthy compliment to this artist’s achievements, and a fitting tribute to his beginnings.  You might say it’s his apex.  His capstone.  His pinnacle.  Or the top of his pyramid.

Twelve pentagons ... or six pyramids?

 From Kawashima’s golden pyramid we head back in time to the second half of the nineteenth century, when gold discovered in San Francisco created a mad rush to the west coast in search of more.   Panning was hard, dirty and dangerous work, which called for a well-earned beverage at the end of a hot day (or at the beginning, too, I’m sure).  Everyone headed to the legendary Bank Exchange bar, situated where the Transamerica pyramid building now stands, for its world renowned Pisco Punch.  Pisco, a type of funky clear brandy, had been brought up from South America by Peruvian and Chilean prospectors, and found glory in the tightly held, secret recipe for the punch made famous at the Bank Exchange.  The bar’s owners took the recipe to their graves, but the bar manager eventually revealed it, and the California Historical Society published it in 1973.   

Pyramid Punch by Simon Difford

In Rudyard Kipling's 1889 epic From Sea to Sea, he immortalized Pisco Punch as being "compounded of the shavings of cherub's wings, the glory of a tropical dawn, the red clouds of sunset and the fragments of lost epics by dead masters".  Indeed.  The spirits writer Simon Difford, who started the very first spirits trade journal, “CLASS” in the late 1990’s, created this variation of the classic in 2006, which he called “Pyramid Punch” in reference to the site of the former Bank Exchange bar where Pisco Punch was born.  Here’s to striking gold, celebrating the present with a nod to the past, and finding the peaks on the pyramid of life.  Cheers!

These pyramids pack a punch

Pyramid Punch by Simon Difford

2 oz pisco (BarSol Mosto Verde Italia)

1 oz elderflower liqueur (St. Germain)

2 oz fresh pressed pineapple juice

½ oz fresh grapefruit juice

2 cloves

Muddle cloves in a mixing tin. Shake together with all other ingredients and ice to chill, strain into a tall glass.  Pineapple garnish.  Enjoy with a mouth guard if you can’t take a punch.

For more about Hideaki Kawashima see:

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