Sotheby’s Highlights Calder Mobile Auction, Dieter Rams Archive and Montblanc Craftsmanship in October Issue
Sotheby’s latest magazine issue for October 2026 brings together stories on modern design, historic friendships in the Parisian avant garde and the painstaking craftsmanship behind luxury fountain pens, alongside a calendar of major art exhibitions opening this month.
Executive editor James Haldane introduces a feature on industrial designer Dieter Rams, based on special access to the Rams archive in Frankfurt and a conversation with Klaus Klemp, managing director of the Dieter and Ingeborg Rams Foundation. The article traces how Braun’s minimalist products emerged from an intensive workshop process of competing ideas and technical challenges, reflecting Rams’s view of “less, but better” as an attitude rather than a visual style.
Modern and Contemporary Art specialist Thomas Bompard previews the upcoming auction of Alexander Calder’s 1950 mobile, created as a gift for art dealers Pierre and Sylvia Loeb, which unites every color the artist used in the medium and pays tribute to the Parisian avant garde. The work will be offered in the “Surrealism and Its Legacy” sale at Sotheby’s Paris on 23 October, with the article drawing on letters between Calder and Loeb to illuminate the personal history behind the piece.
A third feature, by Julie Coe, profiles the Hamburg atelier responsible for Montblanc’s High Artistry fountain pens, where a small team of stone setters, engravers and goldsmiths spend years realizing complex designs. Led by longtime craftsman Thorsten Hering, the workshop requires multi year training, including up to three years to learn how to grind a nib, underscoring the depth of skill behind objects ultimately made to put ink on paper.
The issue also includes a global agenda of museum openings from 10 to 16 October, featuring exhibitions on Hilma af Klint in Dublin, Roy Lichtenstein in New York, Marcel Duchamp in Philadelphia, and surveys at major institutions in Berlin, Amsterdam, London, Rome and Washington D.C.