Donor Profile: Micki and Jay Doros

Fifty years ago, Micki and Jay Doros were vacationing on Cape Cod. With not much else to do, they spent some time casually browsing an antique shop, where they became fascinated with the glass on display. Since that day, they have been avid collectors.

Says Jay, “We were both interested in glass and it was something we could do together. Although our collecting interests have changed over the years, we’ve both remained engaged.”

“During that same vacation, we were reading an antiques magazine and we saw an advertisement for The Corning Museum of Glass Seminar,” says Micki. “We thought we should go. We largely owe Corning for educating us about glass. We purchased a lot of books, and we became good friends with Rakow librarians Norma Jenkins and Virginia Wright. They were a great help to us. The Seminar lectures are wonderful and we always come home having learned something.” The 2012 Annual Seminar on Glass (held annually in October) marks the 49th Corning Museum Seminar the Doroses have attended.

During their first 20 years of collecting, Micki and Jay focused on cut glass. Micki then became interested in art glass. Minna Rosenblatt, an art glass dealer on Madison Avenue, advised them, as did their son, Paul Doros, then curator of glass at the Chrysler Museum of Art. Paul suggested they specialize in one maker, and they chose Louis Comfort Tiffany.

One of the Doroses’ Tiffany objects was displayed in the 2009 exhibition Tiffany Treasures: Favrile Glass from Special Collections. “We bought a lamp at auction. How can you let a (Tiffany) Peacock Eye Lamp Base go?” says Micki. “Then, when we redecorated the house, the lamp got broken. It lay in a box for a year, broken, because we couldn’t bear to look at it. We eventually gave it to the Museum, and conservator, Steve Koob, fixed it.” Learn more about the restoration of the lamp base in the article Restoring Tiffany.

Jay and Micki are active supporters of the Museum. Jay is a Museum Fellow, and both are founding members of the Ennion Society. The Ennion Society is an honorary group for donors who make annual gifts to the Museum of $1,200 or more. Donations are used for acquisitions to the Museum’s glass collection, the world’s most important collection of glass, including the finest examples of glassmaking spanning 3,500 years. Members of the Ennion Society play a critical role in ensuring the Museum’s stature as the international leader in the pursuit and dissemination of knowledge about the art, history, science, and technology of glass and glassmaking.

After all these years, the Doros’ interest in glass is only growing. “The Rakow Library has always been our favorite spot at the Museum,” says Jay. “We spend five days at Seminar, and we spend time at the Library doing research. No matter how much you know, you never know enough.”