The Collection of Sylvia & Garry Knox Bennett 
27 March 2025
The Collection of Sylvia & Garry Knox Bennett 
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David Ellsworth b.1944

Collection of three vessels

1990, 2006
spalted hickory burl, Australian grass tree 3 h × 3½ dia in (8 × 9 cm) 2⅝ h × 3⅝ dia in (7 × 9 cm) 1¼ h × 3⅜ dia in (3 × 9 cm)
estimate: $1,200–1,600
result: $2,032
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Incised signature and date to underside of two examples ‘DE 1990’. Incised signature, date and wood type to underside of one example ‘2006 Ellsworth Spalted Hickory Burl’.
provenance: Collection of Sylvia and Garry Knox Bennett

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Larger Than Life: Garry Knox Bennett

by Glenn Adamson

Garry Knox Bennett was a big man. Big in every way. Tall. Fulsomely bearded. Physically powerful. A veritable Paul Bunyan of furniture, with expansive creativity and curiosity to match. Whatever world he stepped into didn’t quite measure up to him; and so, in the nicest possible way, he had to make it that much more capacious.

Whatever world [Garry] stepped into didn’t quite measure up to him; and so, in the nicest possible way, he had to make it that much more capacious.

That pattern set in early, when, as he put it, “the flower people came to Frisco.” (He was a man of Oakland, with a lifelong suspicion of the fancier sister city across the bay.) Having already gone to art school, initially as a painter and focusing increasingly on sculpture, he now discovered himself as an entrepreneur, starting up a business called Squirkenworks and selling handmade drug paraphernalia at a rapid clip. “God bless the hippies,” he used to say fondly. "They loved anything ugly.” 

read the full essay

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