Five Calder Family Jewels Head to Bonhams With $300,000 Estimate

By Marcus Bennett

Five pieces of handcrafted jewelry that Alexander Calder made for the women of his own family will go under the hammer at Bonhams on November 19, carrying a combined estimate of nearly $300,000. The works have stayed in private hands for almost 70 years.

Calder, known to many as "Sandy," is famous as the inventor of the mobile, the kinetic sculpture in which abstract shapes move gently in natural air currents. He was also a serious jeweler. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which mounted the first museum exhibition devoted to his jewelry in 2008, counts roughly 1,800 unique, handcrafted wearable pieces across his lifetime.

Who wore Calder's jewelry?

His avant-garde creations, often worked in brass, copper, and silver, found favor with 20th-century high society, artists, and celebrities. The roster included socialite Peggy Guggenheim, painter Georgia O'Keeffe, and actress Anjelica Huston.

The appeal has not faded. This past September, model and reality-television figure Kendall Jenner wore a pair of Calder's hand-hammered silver earrings at the Venice Film Festival. According to Louisa Guinness, the London gallerist who gave them to Jenner, the earrings originally belonged to the wife of graphic designer Ivan Chermayeff.

What does the auction contain?

Each of the five lots was made as a gift for a woman in Calder's family: his sister, his mother, and his niece. The lots include:

• A silver necklace executed circa 1940 for his sister Margaret Calder Hayes, estimated at $100,000–$150,000
• Sculptural silver earrings, circa 1944, also gifted to Peggy, estimated at $40,000–$60,000
• A silver brooch spelling "NC," circa 1950, for his mother Nanette
• A silver brooch spelling "EH," circa 1957, for his niece Eva
• A spiral-shaped silver ring, circa 1942, for his niece

The necklace is the star. "Peggy" was a close confidante, a lifelong muse, and a recipient of Calder's early works. Though executed around 1940, its hand-wrought curves read as decidedly modern. The earrings on offer closely resemble the pair Jenner wore in Venice.

Why are these pieces rare?

Calder refused every offer to mass-produce his jewelry, so any piece that reaches the market counts as a rare find. This quintet, kept privately for nearly seven decades, is rarer still. Each piece is entirely bespoke, made for one particular person.

Bonhams will display the collection at its new New York flagship from November 7 ahead of the Post-War & Contemporary Art sale on November 19. The family-provenance lots give collectors a chance at wearable Calder objects whose history is documented from the moment of making, a provenance profile that almost never appears at auction in this concentration.