Stone with a collar is in fact pivotal work in Gabo’s development, since it is the first construction in which he used the irregularly curved forms and flowing lines characteristics of his subsequent work, in place of the pure Euclidean geometry which underlay the constructions which he had produced in Berlin in the 1920’s, Indeed, the change of materials and technique may have helped Gabo free himself from ingrained habits and make the break-through to a more curvilinear language of form.

This new departure had a significance for Gabo beyond purely formal concerns. In his essay Circle, he was at pains to emphasise that abstract art could embody content, and should not therefore be seen as merely decorative. His own declared aim was to communicate and arouse in the viewer a range of ideas, emotions and sensations which would inform his or her experiences of life in a more general sense. Gabo indicated, for example, that the openness of constructed sculpture has a particular capacity to project space as an ‘absolute sculptural element’:

Our task is to penetrate deeper into its substance and bring it closer to our consciousness; so that the sensation of space will become for us a more elementary and everyday emotion the same as the sensation of light or the sensation of sound.

In our sculpture space has ceased to be for us a logical abstraction or a transcendental idea and has become a malleable material element.

One passage may refer directly to Stone with a collar, which was illustrated in Circle as a demonstration of the synthesis of carving and construction: ‘adding space perception to the perception of Masses, emphasising it and forming it, we enrich the expression of Mass making it more essential through the contrast between them whereby Mass retains its solidity and space its extension.

Gabo’s understanding of the visual character of space was formed by his strong interest in contemporary scientific theory, which he had maintained ever since his studies at Munich University before the First Wold War. This was implicit in his later explanation of Spheric Theme, constructed in 1937:

I found no answer in graphic terms in science which would satisfy my vision of space. I consider that in this work of mine there is a satisfactory solution to that problem. Instead of indicating space by an angular intersection of planes, I enclose the space in one continuous surface. I eliminate angularity in space construction and give space the curved character which it has to my perceptions.