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How Do the Toys Work?

Calder employed levers, cranks, and a variety of wheels in these toys, giving the fanciful animals and colorful shapes in each toy their own unique type of movement.

For example, the seal bobs up and down because it has eccentric wheels, meaning that the axle connecting the wheels is not placed in the center of the wheels, but off-center. This causes the seal's head to act as a lever, nodding up and down, causing the ball on its nose to bounce up and down. The duck toy includes a crank shaft attached to the axle to create a similar nodding movement. The bear features eccentric wheels with the axle connected to the top of one wheel and the bottom of the other, producing a wobbling or skating motion. The mechanisms that can be found in each toy replica are listed below.

Fish

• eccentric wheels

Bear

• opposed eccentric wheels on wagon
• rotating wheels (castors) on back feet

Bull

• crank (neck attached to axle)
• the neck is also a lever
• centered eccentric wheels

Nine Wheels

• tilted wheels Six Wheels
• rotating wheel

Duck

• the duck's body is a lever
• a crank shaft is attached to the axle
• though the axle is attached to the wheels at the center, they are acting as centered eccentric wheels because the axle is bent to one side where the crank shaft connects to the axle
• the spacers on either side of the duck's body are rotating wheels, but they are not contributing to the motion of the toy

Seal

• centered eccentric wheels
• the head is a lever

Frog

• arms, legs, and plastic pieces are linked levers
• rotating wheels (castor)
• the feet are attached to wheels and act as cranks.
• though the orange bar looks like a crank because it is attached to the axle, however, because the axle is not eccentric, the orange bar does not act as a crank (it doesn't move, it just helps to stabilize the frog's body)

Note: The ninth original toy on display in the gallery, an acrobat, was not replicated by the Museum because of difficulties with the movement of the toy as it was designed. It is important to consider that the prototypes represent an experimental stage in the design and development of the toys, and are not the final, mass-produced product.

Reproduction, including downloading of Calder works is prohibited by copyright laws and international conventions without the express written permission of Artists rights society (ARS), New York.

(c) 2003 Estate of Alexander Calder/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

This project is supported in part by a grant from the

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