Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Photograph courtesy of the Los Gatos Museum Association

Frank Ingerson (left) and George Dennison share a meal at their Cathedral Oaks home.

Renaissance Craftsmen

Forbes Mill Museum looks at the life and works of two artists who worked as one

By Bob Aldrich

Two versatile artists who displayed craftsmanship that some critics compared to the fine arts of the Renaissance lived and worked together for 55 years in the hills at Alma near Los Gatos.

Not quite so famous as to be household names, George Dennison and Frank Ingerson were widely known in the world of art. They worked together so closely that much of what they produced--interior decorating, paintings, leather goods, inlays, decorative tiles, ceramics, jewelry, sculpture, weaving or needlework--often can't be identified individually.

A current exhibit at Forbes Mill Museum, though quite extensive, can give only an idea of how prolific the two were. Museum curator Mary Foster has gathered samples of numerous types of artwork by the two men. They were expert gold and silversmiths, leather workers, weavers and sculptors, painters and designers. At the museum are ceramics, decorative tiles, elaborate needlework, paintings and furniture. There are Christmas cards the pair designed for their many friends, and there are photos of the two and their home, Cathedral Oaks.

The exhibit, which runs until April 30, includes a painting of exotic birds as well as a striking self-portrait of the two men. There is a luxuriant pigskin-leather and satin Louis XIV chair.

George Dennison died in 1966 at 93, and his partner followed him two years later at the age of 88.

Barrie Coate, an arborist and horticulturist, is the son of Carl Coate, who was caretaker at Cathedral Oaks beginning in 1948. Barrie knew the two men well and shared his memories at a recent museum reception.

Dennison and Ingerson were neighbors and close friends of Moshe and Marutha Menuhin and their musically gifted children, Yehudi, Yaltah and Hephzibah. The two were, in fact, the cause of the Menuhin family's making a home in the Los Gatos hills. Dennison and Ingerson met the Menuhins in Paris, where the young prodigy Yehudi had gone at age 11 to study with Romanian composer Georges Enesco, thanks to the financial aid of a San Francisco banker, Sydney Ehrman. The artists were introduced to the Menuhins by Cora Koshland, a wealthy San Franciscan living in Paris.

Dennison and Ingerson described the lovely hills around the 127 acres they had purchased at Alma in about 1915. The Menuhins visited them there after returning from Europe. Moshe Menuhin eventually bought 80 acres of adjoining land, where he planned a lifelong dream of his, a sort of artists' colony.

That dream never quite came about, but the Menuhins, after living near the Novitiate for several years, did build a home near Cathedral Oaks. Yehudi Menuhin wrote in his Unfinished Journey how he loved to roam the hills around Alma.

Dennison and Ingerson left their land to Yehudi Menuhin. In 1988 the world-famous violinist sold 23 acres of the Cathedral Oaks property to the Peninsula Open Space Trust as a way of preserving the land he had so enjoyed as a young man. It was resold to the Mid-Peninsula Open Space District in 1990. Also in 1990, 163 acres were sold directly to the open space district for $300,000. This property is now part of the 13,000-acre Sierra Azul Open Space Preserve. The Cathedral Oaks home has been torn down.

After a 1925 fire, the artists rebuilt the house, installing a high-ceiling redwood living room with a huge north window. In its 1930s and '40s heyday the nine-room Cathedral Oaks was often the site of musical parties. George Baller, Menuhin's accompanist, and Gabor Reighto, cellist, playing with different violinists, formed the Alma Trio, which became famous, performing around the U.S. and abroad.

"There were many artists and musicians who came to visit," Coate said. "Sometimes there were so many guests, some had to use sleeping bags.

"Almost every room had an exterior wall," Coate recalls. "That was because outside rooms were added on."

Dennison and Ingerson's most celebrated art object--undoubtedly their masterpiece--is their reproduction of the Ark of the Covenant, designed for Temple Emanu-El in San Francisco, where it can still be viewed. Built in London after the two had traveled widely to study Jewish art, the Ark took 14 months to complete. Standing about 10 feet tall, it weighs 3,000 pounds. Consisting of gold repousse (thin hammered gold in intricate relief), old cedar and jewel-covered enameling, the Ark contains the Torah.

Their Ark of the Covenant generated many thousands of words in the world press.

Over a period of 15 years, George Dennison perfected the art of sculptured enamels, a process not known since the ancient Greeks. Since the Greeks left no formula, Dennison worked it out for himself. A sculptured-enamel horsehead on which he labored nine years was fired a total of 125 times.

Such attention to detail and perfection is evident in the works on display at Forbes Mill, even in the complex designs of their needlework. Barrie Coate, an expert on plant life, pointed to a ceramic enamel-on-copper magnolia "leaf" designed by Ingerson. Coate observed that the artist had caught even the natural rust on the edge of the leaf. Both men were meticulous about details, he said.

"Frank and George were always wonderful to me," Coate said. Coate and his wife, Carol, lived at Cathedral Oaks after the artists had passed away.

"Carol was exploring a closet one day and found a painting with its back turned to her. She turned it over and saw it was a painting of George and Frank." (This self-portrait is at Forbes Mill; apparently both men worked on it.) "We hung it over the fireplace. Later we noticed in a photograph that they had kept it on the same mantel.

"It was as if the two were saying, 'Hey, thanks for putting us back where we belong!' "

Also in the exhibit is a reproduction of an ancient Greek painting, Nozze di Aldobrandini. Ingerson was one of only four persons permitted to copy the work, which is a treasure of the Vatican. Some critics called his work indistinguishable from the original.

The Christmas cards the two mailed to their friends showed photographs of Cathedral Oaks produced by Carl Coate and were decorated by the artists. These can be seen at the museum along with photos of the two together.

Before the artists lived at Cathedral Oaks, the property was part of a ranch owned by Flora Raines Loughead. Her sons, Malcolm and Allan, used a barn to build automobiles and aircraft. The brothers formed a company that eventually became Lockheed Missiles & Space Corp. (The Loughead name was pronounced "Lockheed.")

The talents of Ingerson and Dennison were not restricted to studio artwork. They did the interior designs of the Bliss estate in Santa Barbara, the Samarkand Hotel in that city, and Hollywood's once famed Coconut Grove night club in the Ambassador Hotel.

The last public exhibition of some of their art was at Villa Montalvo in January 1963.

Dennison and Ingerson were close and encouraging friends of young Olivia de Havilland, who graduated from Los Gatos High School in 1934. They drove her to Hollywood, where she was to appear in the Hollywood Bowl in Max Reinhardt's A Midsummer Night's Dream, an appearance that led to a film contract. From her home in Paris, the actress sent photographs of herself with the two artists, which are part of the current Forbes Mill exhibit. Some of the photos picture de Havilland with the artists in 1952 at Cathedral Oaks. One of her with Dennison was taken in 1961 when Dennison was hospitalized.

A head higher than his partner, Dennison was "the tall one" in the photographs.

George Dennison was born in New Boston, Ill., Nov. 20, 1872. He and Ingerson, a native of Victory Mills, N. Y., formed their partnership in 1911. A niece of Dennison's, Ferne Dennison Farver, kept house at Cathedral Oaks for her uncle and his partner.

The two artists contributed their skills to local dramatic and musical productions, including at least one of the Los Gatos Town Pageants that were held in the 1940s. Friends of Lillian Fontaine and her daughters, Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine, they lent support to some Fontaine-directed plays.

The two traveled at various times, always returning to Cathedral Oaks.

A Bay Area art critic, Clover Cumming, wrote of their Villa Montalvo exhibit: "There is no other way than by a voluminous biography to recount all the accomplishments of Dennison and Ingerson, painters of the highest caliber, expert gold and silversmiths, past masters of ceramics and enamels, leather workers, weavers, sculptors . . . men whose talents encompass the entire field of art."