Saxe, Stephen O., 1930-2019

Stephen O. Saxe (1930-2019) was an avid collector of type foundry specimen books and metal type, as well as an expert on the history of 19th century printing in the United States.

Born Stephen Oscar Saxe in New York City on February 24, 1930, he was the son of Helen Fields Saxe and Leonard Spier Saxe and also had a brother, Robert Leonard Saxe. Saxe was a graduate of the Riverdale Country School, Harvard College, and Yale Drama School. He began his career in summer stock doing theatrical set design and then moved to television where he designed sets for soap operas. Subsequently he designed books for Harcourt Brace. Retiring at 55, Saxe turned to a study of 19th century typography and printing. In 1974, he was a founding member of the American Printing History Association (APHA) and later became editor of its newsletter (1986-1990).

Saxe wrote numerous articles and also wrote or edited several books, which include: American Iron Hand Presses (1991), Nineteenth-Century American Designers & Engravers of Type (2009), and Travels with Pat (1994), a tribute to his late wife, Patricia Singleton Saxe. He also prepared a second edition of Maurice Annenberg’s Type Foundries of America and their Catalogs (1994), adding eight appendices with checklists of specimen collections and collaborating with Elizabeth Lieberman to create an index to this reference work.

Saxe died on April 28, 2019 at his home in White Plains, New York at the age of eighty-nine. Following his death, the Stephen O. Saxe Collection, which includes rare books, printed ephemera, as well as metal printers’ type, presses, and other printing equipment, was donated to the Cary Graphic Arts Collection at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Executors of Saxe’s estate, the Horton Family (Karen, James, and Sara Horton), made the donation on behalf of their friend and established the Stephen O. Saxe Endowed Research Award in his memory. This annual research grant supports scholars and students conducting research in typography, printing processes, or related areas.