Helsinki Design Sale presents a ring by Alexander Calder
Bukowskis presents a unique ring by Alexander Calder at this autumn’s Helsinki Design Sale – Finland’s leading auction for modern design.
Alexander Stirling Calder and painter Nanette Lederer Calder’s son, Alexander Calder, was born in 1898. Encouraged by his parents to explore artistic creativity, Calder made jewellery for his sister’s dolls as a child. Despite his artistic background, he went on to study mechanical engineering, graduating from the Stevens Institute of Technology in 1919. A few years later, in 1922, Calder began his career as an artist. He created his first pieces of jewellery in 1928.
As an artist, Calder was primarily a sculptor, known especially for his kinetic works and mobiles as well as his stabiles. This basis as a sculptor has evidently influenced Calder’s jewellery, which are characterised by a sculptural language striving for plasticity. With his jewellery, Calder defied the prevailing ideas of what jewellery should be and explored the boundary between artworks and utilitarian objects. The most important sources of inspiration for his jewellery were abstract, surrealist, and primitive art, as well as the Bauhaus, De Stijl, and Constructivism.
Calder’s jewellery is harmonious. Although he used solid, hammered brass and silver, the pieces are light and elegant. Each one is a unique creation made by Calder’s own hand, and while several pieces exist in similar versions, no two are identical.
Of all Alexander Calder’s works, his jewellery became the most personal, as he often created them for close friends and acquaintances. Alvar and Aino Aalto received the ring now presented at the Helsinki Design Sale as a gift from Calder when they visited New York in 1939.
Upon their return to Finland, Alvar and Aino gave the ring as thanks to Aino Aalto’s brother-in-law, Hjalmar Karlström, who had financed the trip. Later, the ring passed to Rosa and Hjalmar Karlström’s youngest child, Ulla Karlström, who married the artist Tapio Tapiovaara in 1943. The silver spiral ring was later inherited by their daughter, who is its current owner.
