"The spiral is one of the oldest forms of ornament. "It's a potent symbol," Agro said, "one that evokes fertility. Then he squiggled it into shapes - leaves, circles and especially spirals. With basic wire."Ĭalder hammered the wire on his anvil, flattening and broadening it into an eighth or quarter of an inch.
He's taking wire and doing stuff with it that no one else was doing. He's working on an anvil and a bench, but he's not doing what jewelers do, not making links or soldering things. In Calder's hands, rings, necklaces, pins, earrings, bracelets - even a tiara - were crafted from brass, steel, silver and bits of old glass or crockery. But, somehow, what he does with it is fantabulous. That is the kind of gauge of wire that a lot of these brass pieces are made out of. "That's the kind of wire that your winter coat comes back on from the dry cleaner," Agro said. One of them was the painter Joan Miro, who received one of Calder's rings, a hunk of yellow and blue porcelain wrapped with brass wire. It's another aspect of his sculpture."Īgro says one reason Calder's jewelry is less familiar is that the artist made the pieces mostly for family and friends. "The jewelry is not a separate thing he did," Agro said.
His mobiles are also popular, their floaty shapes suspended from wires to meet the breeze.Īlthough it is less well-known, Calder's work in jewelry fits smoothly with his wider oeuvre, according to the show's curator, Elisabeth Agro. Many people have seen Calder's big stabiles in public spaces all over the world: black or bright red steel, arcing like graceful ballerinas on impossibly tiny toes. On this, the 110th anniversary of Calder's birth, an exhibition of his jewelry is on display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. His note said, "I have been making wire jewelry - and think I'll really do something with it, eventually." And he did. In 1930, Alexander Calder sent his mother a birthday present: a necklace, fashioned from brass wire, string and bits of broken pottery. Maria Robledo/Calder Foundation, New York/Artists Rights Society
For this 1930 gift for fellow artist Joan Miro, Calder used brass wire and ceramic.
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