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Sapphire Macchia with Carmine Lip Wrap, 2021, 19 x 30 x 27" Inquire
Kaleidoscopic color
Inspired to use all 300 colors in his hotshop, Chihuly explores unexpected color combinations with the Macchia series. Chihuly adds brightly colored spots (Macchia is Italian for spot) for a speckled effect, and pushes the possibilities of scale to create pieces up to four feet in diameter.
Shale Green Macchia with Lavender Lip Wrap, 2007, 20 x 33 x 32"
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SEE THE PROCESS
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Color rods, The Boathouse hotshop, Seattle, 2010
A never-ending color palette
Chihuly’s hotshop includes glass rods in hundreds of colors, allowing him to explore endless, wildly contrasting color combinations. While creating Macchia, Chihuly developed an approach that allows him to keep the inside and outside colors from melding—the creation of a white interior layer he calls “clouds.”
Macchia in process, The Hotshop, The Boathouse, Seattle, 2006
Creating spots of color
A signature element of Chihuly’s Macchia is the fusing of colored glass chips (called jimmies or frit) onto the exterior layer to create a spotted, speckled effect. This gives Chihuly an opportunity to incorporate even more color into his pieces.
“I put one color on the inside, then sort of a translucent or opaque white in the middle, and then another color on the outside. I loved the…ones that seemed to make the least amount of sense, like the really crazy ones—purple and chartreuse.”
–Chihuly
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