The Consummate Collector

The first pieces they acquired were by Richard Marquis, Jay Musler, “and someone I’ve never heard of before or since,” says Dorothy. “Many of the artists went on to have illustrious careers; others faded away. It made no difference to our enjoyment, because we never bought anything as an investment. An object had to spark an emotional response—literally demand, ‘Take me home with you.’”

This was a siren call they happily heeded, and when their collection of glass outgrew their pied-à-terre in San Francisco, George and Dorothy purchased the apartment next door to gain display space. On a wintry day in November, the objects are animated by the crisp light that pours in through windows facing the whitecap-dotted bay. As Dorothy walks through the rooms (wearing expressive jewelry by Sam Shaw), she rattles off artists’ names and stories as if they’re family members or close friends—which, in fact, many are.

“It was the most wonderful time of our lives,” Dorothy reminisces. “The people we met through craft became our best friends—fellow collectors, but especially artists like Howard Ben Tré, Dale Chihuly, Dan Dailey and Linda MacNeil, Flora Mace and Joey Kirkpatrick, and Billy Morris. George gave up golfing, because he said he preferred prowling around the galleries and studios.”

Sculptor Joey Kirkpatrick recalls dining with the Saxes in the early 1980s with her wife, artist Flora Mace, and becoming fast friends. “Flora and I had just returned from Pilchuck, full of excitement, and George and Dorothy quickly became part of the fabric of the place—watching glassblowing and learning about being an artist from the ground floor,” recalls Kirkpatrick. “They thought outside the box of established norms of collecting and put together a fantastic collection that not only supported artists but inspired collectors too.”

The Saxes also encouraged the next generation. Every spring, Clifford Rainey—who chaired the glass department at California College of Art—brought his students to the Saxes’ apartment, where each selected three pieces that moved them and discussed why. “They had a way of seeing things as artists that wouldn’t have occurred to George or me, and we gained so much insight from them into our own collection,” says Dorothy.

After a few years of doggedly pursuing glass, there was little left to buy. “George was getting the bends—he loved the thrill of the chase,” says Dorothy. As they contemplated other media, it was in the context of their primary dwelling, a wood-shingled house in leafy Menlo Park, about 45 minutes south of San Francisco.

This sun-dappled space is cozier—more domestic and inward-looking—than their city apartment, and a natural setting for the ceramic, wood, fiber, and metal objects that reside on every surface (a Viola Frey sculpture holds court over the bathtub). The house is, in its way, a shrine to the very values of postwar studio craft: a rejection of the mass-produced and machine-made in favor of the personal and the handwrought.

“At first, the only ceramist we’d heard of was Peter Voulkos,” says Dorothy. “So our dear friend, art dealer Ruth Braunstein, took us to Pete’s studio to pick out a plate. She also showed us some of his stack pieces, and we fell in love with one, but it was way out of our price range for our first foray. Ruth insisted we just enjoy it for a while and then return it. So Pete came over for drinks and placed it in the house—and it was terrific. Every time we tried to return it, Ruth lowered the price—which was not our intention, although it’s a good technique—until finally, we couldn’t afford not to keep it.”

The Voulkos stack was followed, in short order, by ceramists such as Ron Nagle, Richard Shaw, Robert Arneson, Manuel Neri, and Betty Woodman (“her pieces make my heart sing”) and by objects and furniture in other materials—from a John Cederquist trompe l’oeil chest to beaded jewelry by Joyce Scott, a trove of Kay Sekimachi’s delicate fiber vessels, and a wall of turned wood bowls by her late husband, Bob Stocksdale. “Whenever George needed a fix, he’d visit Bob in Berkeley and come home with two or three new bowls,” says Dorothy.