Alexander Calder “Splotchy” 3-Panel Linen-Mounted Screen Laverne International

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Alexander Calder “Splotchy” Three-Panel Folding Screen for Laverne International, circa 1950

Creator: Alexander Calder
Maker: Laverne International
Design: Splotchy, conceived … Read more Alexander Calder “Splotchy” Three-Panel Folding Screen for Laverne International, circa 1950

Creator: Alexander Calder
Maker: Laverne International
Design: Splotchy, conceived 1949
Medium: Hand silk-screened linen mounted to folding screen
Dimensions: 61 in. W × 84 in. H × 1 in. D
Panel Width: Each panel 20 in. W
Dimensions (fully folded): 84 in. H × 20 in. W × 4 in. D

This three-panel folding screen is a documented period realization of the Splotchy design created by Alexander Calder in 1949 for Laverne International’s groundbreaking Contempora wallcovering and textile program. Conceived at the intersection of fine art and modern interior design, Splotchy exemplifies Calder’s singular approach to abstraction—playful, rhythmic, and deliberately anti-hierarchical. Bold black arcs, looping calligraphic gestures, star-like forms, and floating red and green discs animate the linen surface, producing a dynamic visual field that responds subtly to light, movement, and architectural context.

Laverne International produced Calder’s Splotchy design in both linen and paper formats from 1949 through the early 1960s, as documented in Michael Krzyzanowski’s Laverne Furniture, Textiles & Wallcoverings. The design was not merely commercial but was actively deployed by the Lavernes in full-scale architectural and furnishing applications. A similar folding screen is documented as installed at the Lavernes’ Laurel Hollow estate on Long Island, shown alongside a Calder mobile in a period photograph reproduced on page 89, depicting Calder in situ amid large-scale installations of his designs.

Laurel Hollow functioned not as a public retail gallery but as a private residence integrated with a working design studio and experimental presentation environment. There, textiles, wallcoverings, and furnishings were installed at full scale and evaluated in situ, reflecting the Lavernes’ practice of translating Calder’s graphic language into immersive interior and architectural contexts—bridging modern art, interior design, and progressive postwar experimentation.

This screen was custom fabricated by Laverne International in the early 1950s, utilizing hand silk-screened linen mounted to a three-panel folding screen format. While not a unique artwork executed by Calder himself, it represents a documented, period-realized collaboration in which Calder supplied the original design and Laverne International executed its transformation into a functional architectural furnishing—an approach central to the Contempora program and to postwar American modernism more broadly. See less