Symphony in Three Movements | Nature | Size M

Ole Flensted named this one after its structure: three separate movements, like a symphony, each a balanced arm of wooden spheres hanging from the one above. Designed in 1972, it is the purest expression of what a mobile is: a set of counterweights so precisely balanced that the whole thing floats level from a single thread, and then keeps floating as every arm turns at its own tempo.

The Nature version is unpainted beech and stainless steel, which gives it the calm of a wooden sculpture, and at nearly three feet wide (34 inches) it needs room to breathe: a living room with a high ceiling, an open-plan kitchen, a studio, an office lobby. It is the piece for someone who wants one serious mobile and nothing else in the room competing with it. It's also, quietly, a lesson in torque and equilibrium that engineers tend to stare at.

Assembled by hand on Funen, Denmark, by the Flensted family workshop.

At a glance: Design: Ole Flensted, 1972 · Size: 13.8" H × 33.5" W (35 × 85 cm) · Materials: beech, stainless steel · Colorway: Nature (unpainted beech) · Handmade in Denmark · Ships from Princeton, NJ