2007

Exhibits at the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, Pittsburgh.

2006

Mother, Viola, dies at the age of ninety-eight in Tacoma, Washington. Presents glasshouse exhibitions at the Missouri Botanical Garden and the New York Botanical Garden. Chihuly in Tacoma—hotshop sessions at the Museum of Glass—reunites Chihuly and glassblowers from important periods in his artistic development.

2005

Marries Leslie Jackson. Mounts a major garden exhibition at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, outside London. Shows at Marlborough Monaco and Marlborough Fine Art, London. Exhibits at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, Coral Gables, Florida.

2004

Creates new forms in his Fiori series for an exhibition at Marlborough Gallery, New York. The Orlando Museum of Art and Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida, become the first museums to collaborate and present simultaneous major exhibitions of his work. Presents a glasshouse exhibition at Atlanta Botanical Garden.

2003

Begins the Fiori series for the opening exhibition at the Tacoma Art Museum's new building. TAM designs a permanent installation for its collection of his works. Chihuly at the Conservatory opens at the Franklin Park Conservatory, Columbus, Ohio. Chihuly Drawing is published by Portland Press.

2002

Creates installations for the Olympic Arts Festival at the Salt Lake 2002 Olympic Winter Games. The Chihuly Bridge of Glass, conceived by Chihuly and designed in collaboration with Arthur Andersson of Andersson·Wise Architects, is dedicated in Tacoma, Washington.

2001

Chihuly at the V&A opens at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Exhibits at Marlborough, New York and London. Groups a series of Chandeliers for the first time to create an installation for the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Receives an honorary doctorate from the University of Hartford, in Connecticut. Artist Italo Scanga dies, friend and mentor for over three decades. Presents his first major glasshouse exhibition, Chihuly in the Park, a Garden of Glass at the Garfield Park Conservatory, Chicago.

2000

Designs and exhibits Crystal Tree of Light for the White House Millennium Celebration; the sculpture will be permanently installed at the Clinton Presidential Center, Little Rock, Arkansas, in 2004. Creates La Tour de Lumière sculpture for the exhibition Contemporary American Sculpture in Monte Carlo. Marlborough Gallery represents Chihuly. More than a million people visit Chihuly in the Light of Jerusalem 2000. Receives an honorary doctorate from Brandeis University. Chihuly Projects is published by Portland Press and distributed by Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

1999

Begins Jerusalem Cylinder series with gaffer James Mongrain in concert with Flora Mace and Joey Kirkpatrick. In celebration of the millennium, Chihuly mounts his most ambitious exhibition to date: Chihuly in the Light of Jerusalem 2000, for which he creates seventeen installations within the stone walls of an ancient military fortress, currently known as the Tower of David Museum of the History of Jerusalem. Travels to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, to unveil an eighteen-foot Chandelier gracing the main entrance of the museum. Returns to Jerusalem to create a sixty-foot wall from twenty-four massive blocks of ice shipped from Alaska.

1998

Participates in the Sydney Arts Festival in Australia. A son, Jackson Viola Chihuly, is born February 12 to Dale Chihuly and Leslie Jackson. Two large Chandeliers are created for Benaroya Hall, home of the Seattle Symphony. Chihuly's largest sculpture to date, the Fiori di Como, is installed in the Bellagio Resort lobby in Las Vegas. Creates a major installation for Atlantis on Paradise Island, Bahamas. PBS stations air Chihuly Over Venice, the nation’s first high-definition television (HDTV) broadcast.

1997

Continues and expands series of experimental plastics he calls Polyvitro in his newly renovated Ballard studio. Chihuly is designed by Massimo Vignelli and copublished by Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, and Portland Press, Seattle. A permanent installation of Chihuly’s work opens at the Hakone Glass Forest, Ukai Museum, in Hakone, Japan. Chihuly and his team invite local high school students to photograph a blow and installation at the Vianne factory in France.

1996

Chihuly Over Venice continues with a blow in Monterrey, Mexico, and culminates with the installation of fourteen Chandeliers at various sites in Venice. The exhibition Chihuly Over Venice begins its national tour at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Missouri. Chihuly purchases the Ballard Building in Seattle for use as mock-up and studio space. Creates a major installation for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Governor’s Ball following the Academy Awards ceremony in Hollywood, California. Creates his first permanent outdoor installation, Icicle Creek Chandelier, for the Sleeping Lady Conference Retreat in Leavenworth, Washington. Receives an honorary doctorate from Gonzaga University, Spokane, Washington.

1995

Cerulean Blue Macchia with Chartreuse Lip Wrap is added to the White House Collection of American Crafts. Chihuly Over Venice begins with a glassblowing session in Nuutajärvi, Finland, and a subsequent blow at the Waterford Crystal factory, Ireland. Creates Chihuly e Spoleto, an installation for the 38th Spoleto Festival of the Two Worlds, in Spoleto, Italy. Receives an honorary doctorate from Pratt Institute, New York.

1994

Chihuly at Union Station, five large-scale installations for Tacoma’s Union Station Federal Courthouse, is sponsored by the Executive Council for a Greater Tacoma and organized by the Tacoma Art Museum. Hilltop Artists in Residence, a glassblowing program for at-risk youths in Tacoma, Washington, is created by friend Kathy Kaperick. Within two years the program partners with Tacoma Public Schools, and Chihuly remains a strong role model and advisor. Discussions begin on a project to build the Museum of Glass on the Thea Foss Waterway in Tacoma and to design the Chihuly Bridge of Glass which would connect the museum to Tacoma's university district.

1993

Begins Piccolo Venetian series with Lino Tagliapietra. Alumni Association of the University of Washington names him Alumnus Summa Laude Dignatus, its most prestigious honor. Creates 100,000 Pounds of Ice and Neon, a temporary installation in the Tacoma Dome, Tacoma, Washington, attended by 35,000 visitors in four days.

1992

Begins Chandelier series with a large-scale hanging sculpture for the exhibition Dale Chihuly: Installations 1964–1992, curated by Patterson Sims at the Seattle Art Museum. Honored as the first National Living Treasure by the Institute for Human Potential, University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Designs sets for Seattle Opera production of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, which premires in 1993. The Pilchuck Stumps are created during this project but are not widely exhibited.

1991

Begins Niijima Float series with Richard Royal as gaffer, creating some of the largest pieces of glass ever blown by hand. Completes a number of large-scale architectural installations, including those for GTE World Headquarters in Irving, Texas, and the Yasui Konpira-gu Shinto Shrine in Kyoto, Japan. He and Sylvia Peto divorce.

1990

Purchases the historic Pocock Building located on Lake Union, realizing his dream of being on the water in Seattle. Renovates the building and names it The Boathouse, for use as a studio, hotshop, and archives. Travels to Japan.

1989

With Italian glass masters Lino Tagliapietra and Pino Signoretto, and a team of glassblowers at Pilchuck Glass School, begins Putti series. Working with Tagliapietra, Chihuly creates Ikebana series, inspired by his travels to Japan and exposure to ikebana masters.

1988

Inspired by a private collection of Italian art-deco glass, primarily designed by Martinuzzi and Scarpa, Chihuly begins Venetian series. Working from Chihuly’s drawings, Lino Tagliapietra serves as gaffer. Receives an honorary doctorate from the California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland.

1987

Establishes his first hotshop in the Van de Kamp Building near Lake Union, Seattle. Begins working hot glass on a larger scale and creates several site-specific installations, including Puget Sound Forms for the Seattle Aquarium. Donates permanent retrospective collection to the Tacoma Art Museum in memory of his brother and father. Begins association with artist Parks Anderson, commencing with the Rainbow Room Frieze, an installation for the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center in New York City. Marries playwright Sylvia Peto.

1986

Begins Persian series with Martin Blank as gaffer, assisted by Robbie Miller. With the opening of Objets de Verre at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Palais du Louvre, in Paris, he becomes one of only four American artists to have had a one-person exhibition at the Louvre. Receives honorary doctorates from both the University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, and RISD, Providence.

1985

Returns to Baden, Austria, this time to teach with William Morris, Flora Mace, and Joey Kirkpatrick. Travels to Malta and the Channel Islands. Purchases the Buffalo Shoe Company building on the east side of Lake Union in Seattle and begins restoring it for use as a primary studio and residence.

1984

Begins work on the Soft Cylinder series, with Flora Mace and Joey Kirkpatrick executing the glass drawings. He is honored as RISD President’s Fellow at the Whitney Museum in New York and receives the Visual Artists Award from the American Council for the Arts, as well as the first of three state Governor’s Arts Awards.

1983

Sells the Boathouse in Rhode Island and returns to the Pacific Northwest after sixteen years on the East Coast. Works at Pilchuck in the fall and winter, further developing the Macchia series with William Morris as chief gaffer.

1982

With William Morris, tours one thousand miles of Brittany by bicycle in the spring. First major catalog is published: Chihuly: Glass, designed by an RISD colleague and friend, Malcolm Grear with an essay by Linda Norden.

1981

Begins Macchia series, using up to three hundred colors of glass. These wildly spotted, brightly colored forms are dubbed "the uglies" by his mother, but they are eventually christened Macchia, Italian for "spotted", by his friend Italo Scanga.

1980

Resigns his teaching position at RISD. He returns there periodically during the 1980s as artist-in-residence. Begins Seaform series at Pilchuck in the summer and later, back in Providence, returns to architectural installations with the creation of windows for the Shaare Emeth Synagogue in St. Louis, Missouri. Purchases his first building, the Boathouse, in Pawtuxet Cove, Rhode Island, for his residence and studio.

1979

Dislocates his shoulder in a bodysurfing accident and relinquishes the gaffer position for good. William Morris becomes his chief gaffer for the next several years. Chihuly begins to make drawings as a way to communicate his designs. Together with Morris, Benjamin Moore, and student assistants Michael Scheiner and Richard Royal, he blows glass in Baden, Austria.

1978

Meets William Morris, a student at Pilchuck Glass School, and the two begin a close, eight-year working relationship. A solo show curated by Michael W. Monroe at the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C., is another milestone in Chihuly’s career.

1977

Inspired by Northwest Coast Indian baskets he sees at the Washington State Historical Society in Tacoma, begins the Basket series at Pilchuck over the summer, with Benjamin Moore as his assistant gaffer. Continues his bicoastal teaching assignments, dividing his time between Rhode Island and the Pacific Northwest. Charles Cowles curates a three-person show of the work of Chihuly, Italo Scanga, and James Carpenter at the Seattle Art Museum.

1976

Travels with Seaver Leslie to the Great Britain and Ireland. An automobile accident in England leaves him, after weeks in the hospital and 256 stitches in his face, without sight in his left eye and with permanent damage to his right ankle and foot. After recuperating at the home of painter Peter Blake, he returns to Providence to serve as head of the Department of Sculpture and the Program in Glass at RISD. He invites Robert Grosvenor, Fairfield Porter, Dennis Oppenheim, Alan Seret, and John Torreano to RISD as visiting artists. Henry Geldzahler, curator of contemporary art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, acquires three Navajo Blanket Cylinders for the museum’s collection. This is a turning point in Chihuly’s career, and a friendship between artist and curator commences.

1975

At RISD, begins series of Navajo Blanket Cylinders. Kate Elliott and, later, Flora Mace fabricate the complex thread drawings. He receives the first of two National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist grants. Artist-in-residence with Seaver Leslie at Artpark, on the Niagara Gorge, in New York State. Begins Irish Cylinders and Ulysses Cylinders with Leslie and Mace.

1974

Returns to Europe, this time on a tour of European glass centers with Thomas Buechner of the Corning Museum of Glass and Paul Schulze, head of the Design Department at Steuben Glass. Makes his first significant purchase of art, La Donna Perfecta, an art-deco glass mosaic. Upon returning to the United States, he builds a glass shop for the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Supported by a National Endowment for the Arts grant at Pilchuck, James Carpenter, a group of students, and he develop a technique for picking up glass thread drawings. In December at RISD, he completes his last collaborative project with Carpenter, Corning Wall.

1972

While he is at Pilchuck, his studio on Hobart Street in Providence burns down. Returns to Venice with Carpenter to blow glass for the Glas heute exhibition at the Museum Bellerive, Zurich, Switzerland. He and Carpenter continue to collaborate on large-scale architectural projects, and, confining themselves to the use of static architectural structures, they create Rondel Door and Cast Glass Door at Pilchuck. Back in Providence, they create Dry Ice, Bent Glass and Neon, a conceptual breakthrough.

1971

On the site of a tree farm owned by Seattle art patrons Anne Gould Hauberg and John Hauberg, the Pilchuck Glass School experiment is started. A $2,000 grant to Chihuly and Ruth Tamura from the Union of Independent Colleges of Art and additional funding from the Haubergs provide seed money for this innovative new school. From this modest beginning, Pilchuck Glass School becomes an institution that will have a profound impact on artists working in glass worldwide. Chihuly’s first environmental installation at Pilchuck is created that summer. In the fall, at RISD, he creates 20,000 Pounds of Ice and Neon and Glass Forest #1, and Glass Forest #2 with James Carpenter, installations that prefigure later environmental works by Chihuly.

1970

Chihuly and friends shut down RISD in protests over the Cambodian offensive. During the strike, Chihuly and student John Landon develop ideas for an alternative school in the Pacific Northwest, inspired by Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. Meets artist Buster Simpson, who later works with Chihuly and Landon at the school. Meets James Carpenter, a student in the illustration department, and they begin a four-year collaboration.

1969

Travels again, this time with his mother, throughout Europe, visiting relatives in Sweden and making pilgrimages to meet glass masters Erwin Eisch in Germany and Jaroslava Brychtová and Stanislav Libenský in Czechoslovakia. Returning to the United States, Chihuly establishes the glass program at RISD, where he teaches full time for the next eleven years. Students include Hank Adams, Howard Ben Tré, James Carpenter, Dan Dailey, Michael Glancy, Roni Horn, Flora Mace, Mark McDonnell, Benjamin Moore, Pike Powers, Michael Scheiner, Paul Seide, Therman Statom, Steve Weinberg and Toots Zynsky.

1968

Receives M.F.A. in Ceramics from RISD. Awarded a Fulbright Fellowship, which enables him to travel and work in Europe. Invited by architect Ludovico de Santillana, son-in-law of Paolo Venini, Chihuly becomes the first American glassblower to work in the prestigious Venini Fabrica on the island of Murano. Returns to the United States and spends the first of four consecutive summers teaching at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, Maine. There he meets Director Fran Merritt, who becomes a friend and lifetime mentor.

1967

Receives M.S. in Sculpture from the University of Wisconsin. Enrolls at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Providence, where he begins his exploration of environmental works using neon, argon, and blown glass. Visits the Montreal World Exposition ’67 and is inspired by the architectural glass works of Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová at the Czechoslovak pavilion. Awarded a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant for work in glass.

Italo Scanga, then on the faculty at Pennsylvania State University’s Art Department, lectures at RISD, and the two begin a lifelong friendship. They consider themselves brothers.

1966

Works as a commercial fisherman in Alaska to earn money for graduate school. Enters the University of Wisconsin at Madison, on a full scholarship, where he studies glassblowing under Harvey Littleton. It was the first glass program in the United States.

1965

Receives B.A. in Interior Design from the University of Washington and works as a designer for John Graham Architects in Seattle. Introduced to textile designer Jack Lenor Larsen, who becomes a mentor and friend. Experimenting on his own in his basement studio, Chihuly blows his first glass bubble by melting stained glass and using a metal pipe. Awarded Highest Honors from the American Institute of Interior Designers (now ASID).

1964

While still a student, receives the Seattle Weavers Guild Award for his innovative use of glass and fiber. Returns to Europe, visits Leningrad, and makes the first of many trips to Ireland.

1963

Works on a kibbutz in the Negev Desert. Meets architect Robert Landsman in Jericho, Jordan, and they visit the site of ancient Petra together. Redirected after meeting Landsman and spending a year abroad, he returns to the University of Washington in the College of Arts and Sciences and studies under Hope Foote and Warren Hill. In a weaving class with Doris Brockway, he incorporates glass shards into woven tapestries.

1962

Disillusioned with his studies, he leaves school and travels to Florence to study art. Discouraged by not being able to speak Italian, he travels to the Middle East.

1961

Joins Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity and becomes rush chairman. Learns to melt and fuse glass.

1959

Graduates from high school in Tacoma. Although he has no interest in pursuing a formal education, his mother persuades him to enroll in the College of Puget Sound (now the University of Puget Sound) in his hometown. Two accomplishments the following year—a term paper on Van Gogh and the remodeling of the recreation room in his mother’s home—motivate him to transfer to the University of Washington in Seattle to study interior design and architecture.

1958

His father suffers a fatal heart attack at age 51. His mother goes to work to support Dale and herself.

1957

Older brother and only sibling, George, is killed in a Naval Air Force training accident in Pensacola, Florida.

1941

Born September 20 in Tacoma, Washington, to George Chihuly and Viola Magnuson Chihuly. George Chihuly is a butcher by trade and a union organizer. Viola Chihuly is a homemaker and avid gardener. The family’s ancestry is predominantly Hungarian, Czech, and Slavic on the Chihuly side and Swedish and Norwegian on the Magnuson side.