Born Sam Perkins Fiske in Chicago, Illinois, May 27, 1889, he was the first son of Asian art collector and female museum specialist Gertrude Bass Warner and George F. Fiske.

Warner traveled extensively throughout Asian with his parents and, as an amateur photographer, he took many of the turn-of-the-century lantern slide photographs now housed in the University of Oregon Knight Library Special Collections & University Archives.

During his tenure, he oversaw many improvements in the Office and its registration procedures.

Most notably, he reorganized the many disparate units of the Office into four divisions – Cataloging, Examining, Reference, and Service.

Sam Bass Warner died on April 23, 1979, in Guilford, Connecticut.