Stephen O. Saxe papers

Stephen Oscar Saxe was born on February 24, 1930 in New York City to Leonard Spier Saxe and Helen Fields Saxe. He attended school in the city and high school at Riverdale Country School. Saxe attended Harvard College where he majored in English literature and was the Drama Editor of the Harvard Crimson, the undergraduate daily newspaper. Upon graduating in 1951, he continued his education at Yale Drama, majoring in stage design.

After graduating in 1954 with his Master of Fine Arts degree, Saxe began his twenty-year career designing scenery for network television (CBS) in New York and theatre design including that of the New York City Opera production of Porgy and Bess (1960/1961) as well as designs for “The Death of Lord Nelson” featured in Madame Tussaud’s Waxworks (1965) in London.

During 1970 to 1972, Saxe became interested in typography, and he eventually retired from television and stage design to pursue an active role in the typographic field. In 1974, he became a founding member of the American Printing History Association (APHA), serving on the Board of Trustees until 1983. During that time, Saxe worked as a book designer for Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.

On November 25, 1989, Saxe married Patricia Ann Singleton Foster. They met on a train where Singleton admired that Saxe was completing the New York Times crossword in pen. After her death, he published Travels with Pat (1994) as a tribute, which recounts their meeting.

Saxe was a scholar, writer, collaborator, presenter, and collector. He wrote many lectures including “Printing on Trains, and Trains in Printing,” given in 1991 for APHA’s Lieberman Lecture. He published many in-depth articles which appeared in the early issues of APHA’s journal, Printing History, of which he was the newsletter editor from 1986 to 1990. His books include American Iron Hand Presses (1991) (with wood block prints from John DePol), Nineteenth-Century Designers and Engravers of Type (2009), and a new edition of Maurice Annenberg’s Type Foundries of American and their Catalogs (1994).

Saxe continued to work into his retirement until his death in 2019. His work as a collector and historian left a lasting impression on the printing and typography fields.