That’s just what Doug Anderson, a glass collector in Palm Beach, has been chagrined to discover, having broken a couple of acquisitions over the years. He and his wife, Dale, have filled their duplex apartment with hundreds of vessels, windows and sculptures by prominent glassblowers, including William Morris, Paul Stankard, Ginny Ruffner, Dick Marquis, Paul Marioni and Ann Troutner. Over the stairwell, Dale Chihuly, in collaboration with the local architect John Colamarino, dangled 32 glass blossoms on a metal armature. Doug scarcely risks touching his glass anymore—“I’ve been asked not to,” he says ruefully.

Once a year, a construction manager climbs scaffolding in the stairwell to clean the Chihuly assemblage. “We leave the apartment for that,” Doug says. “It would freak us out to watch—we don’t even ask how it’s done.” There are rewards: “When the sun streams in, the whole apartment sparkles or glows, depending on the time of day. Our possessions give us such pleasure.” But in his next life, he adds, only half joking, “I hope to be collecting stones.”

"Extreme Art" originally appeared in the September 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's September 2008 Table of Contents.