Alexander Calder, Saché: The Studio and the Everyday Objects, from Toaster to Mobile

Calder lived between two farms: Roxbury, in Connecticut, bought in 1933, and Saché, in the Touraine, where he settled in 1953 and had a large studio built on the hillside ten years later. In both, the kitchen looks like the studio: everything has been bent, cut and riveted by his own hand.

The studio

At Roxbury, a white barn cluttered with mobiles hanging from the beams. At Saché, the low house known as François Ier, then the new studio, vast, under a glass roof, from which the monumental stabiles of the 1960s emerged. He worked there until his death, in 1976. The studio now hosts artists in residence; the house remains private.

What you see there

Cutlery in wire and hammered brass, ladles, a toaster in twisted wire, lamps, jewellery for his wife Louisa, toys for his daughters. Tables in raw wood, benches, farm chairs, wood-burning stoves. On the walls, his gouaches; on the ceiling, mobiles — the word is Marcel Duchamp's, from 1931, "stabile" being Jean Arp's. Nothing is precious, everything is made. The Circus, carried on from 1926 to 1931 in wire, cork and cloth, is the ancestor of all these objects.

The palette

Red, blue, yellow, black, white: the colours of Mondrian, whose studio, visited in 1930, decided him on abstraction. Neither gradient nor gloss: matte painted sheet metal, black wire, bare wood.

What to take home from it

A kitchen where the utensils, hung on the wall, regard one another. A mobile — a real one, light, moving with the air. A single frank colour per room, against white. Wooden furniture that is not afraid of knocks. The originals belong to the art market; yet a craftsman who works steel wire and beaten brass makes the very same gesture.

Spotted a piece in this spirit? Scan it on Beyit: an edition mobile, a wire lamp or hammered cutlery — the app tells you who made it and what it is worth.