Dale Chihuly's Public and Private Spaces

Dale Chihuly’s Seattle “Boathouse” glass blowing hot shop and former home isn’t open to the public. Shame. The building’s industrial, utilitarian exterior belies the wonderland inside.

In addition to housing Chihuly’s team’s workspace, it displays his numerous collections. Collections of his artwork. Collections of artwork from artists he admires. Collections of Edward Curtis photogravures – one of the largest. Of Northwest Coast Indigenous baskets – dozens. Of early 20^th century trade blankets – hundreds. Art books, old radios, old cameras, record albums.

Spectacularly arranged.

The Northwest Room, The Boathouse, Seattle, 2026. Artwork by Dale Chihuly © Chihuly Studio. All rights reserved.

The iconic glass artist’s first degree was in interior design from the University of Washington.

“I call the Boathouse Dale’s soul in a building,” Leslie Chihuly, the artist’s wife who now also serves as President and CEO of Chihuly Studio, said. “It’s really a special place; it’s a home and a studio, and even though we don’t live there now, it’s still that.”

Recreating aspects of the Boathouse and open to the public is Chihuly Garden & Glass in the shadow of the Space Needle. Literally. Visitors looking skyward from the garden or the conservatory look up at the underside of the Space Needle. Chihuly (b. 1941) meticulously crafted every aspect of Garden & Glass down to the staff uniforms and what’s on sale in the gift shop.

Within Chihuly Garden & Glass, the gallery most closely resembling the Boathouse – so named because it overlooks Lake Union and once served as a boatmaking workshop – is “Chihuly’s Inspirations,” the first large space visitors encounter.

“He's an avid collector, but those collections and the things that he surrounds himself with have an influence on his work,” Taryn Coles, Assistant Director of Chihuly Garden & Glass, said. “You see that with the colors and patterns in the blankets, but then also, most significantly, are the Native baskets.”

The baskets at Chihuly Garden & Glass and the Boathouse are large, earthy, worn. Nineteenth and early 20^th century. They come from a variety of Northwest Coast tribes, Alaska through Northern California.

Dale Chihuly, ‘Black Basket Set with Orange Lip Wraps,’ 2008. The Northwest Room, The Boathouse, Seattle, 2026. Artwork by Dale Chihuly © Chihuly Studio. All rights reserved.

“It was about 1977 that I was visiting the Washington State Historical Society… looking at their Indian basket collection,” Chihuly recalls on the Chihuly Garden & Glass website. “It dawns on me that, hey, wouldn't it be interesting to try to make these baskets out of glass? A lot of the (Native) baskets are old and kind of crumbly, and they're not always straight and firm. I got into my mind that somehow, I wanted to make (my glass baskets) asymmetrical.”

Doing so was a radical departure at the time.

“All of the glass work that was happening was very symmetrical,” Coles explained. “It was all about trying to make things the same on the left as the right, and when (Chihuly) went and observed these baskets and saw how much life they had in their shape – they had been completely transformed with gravity and use and age – and it made them that much more interesting. He started thinking about how he could approach glass in a similar way and just let it do its thing and push the bounds of collapsibility and think about how much more interesting it could be when it takes on its organic shape.”

So that’s what he did.

“First I would bang them with a paddle to beat them up a little bit, but I soon learned that if I just used the heat of the furnace and the fire, that I could get the same kind of movement from the fire itself and it was more beautiful,” Chihuly continues on the audio recording. “That was really the breakthrough series for me to begin to form glass with fire, with gravity, with heat, with centrifugal force. I was using just human breath going down into this miraculous material, blowing it up and then blowing it more and more, pushing its limits, making it as thin as I could, and getting it so hot that it would almost collapse and begin to move. I was pushing the edge of thinness and collapsibility and making new forms.”

Dale Chihuly, ‘Basket Set’ and ‘Chandeliers,’ The Evelyn Room, The Boathouse, Seattle, 2026. Artwork by Dale Chihuly © Chihuly Studio. All rights reserved.

Dale Chihuly’s miraculous glass sculptures which have been exhibited in the most prestigious art museums and botanical gardens around the world for the past 30 years started with the effects of time on Native American baskets. With the designs and patterns of Indian trade blankets. With the sepia tones of Curtis photographs. With the rich colors of split Douglas fir trees.

“When you look at the color of the Tabac Baskets (on view in ‘Chihuly’s Inspirations’) and the rich sepia tone of these you can see how he was inspired to create this work,” Michelle Bufano, Executive Director Chihuly Garden & Glass, said. “He grew up in the Northwest. This is what surrounded him. You'll see that throughout, how he was completely inspired.”

Chihuly’s hometown of Tacoma, WA is surrounded by 100-plus feet tall Douglas fir trees. The “Chihuly’s Inspirations” gallery and Boathouse both have dumbfounding single piece Douglas fir tables. At the Boathouse, one stretches 85 feet in length. Single piece. One tree.

Their grandeur boggles the mind.

Chihuly’s fragile Tabac Baskets resting on a solid plank of Douglas fir, hundreds of pounds in weight, hundreds of years old, is apex Pacific Northwest.

Dale Chihuly 'Tabac Baskets' on a Douglas fir table inside the 'Chihuly's Inspirations' gallery at Chihuly Garden & Glass. Trade blankets and Edward Curtis photos from the artist's collection in the background.

Native Influence, Native Reciprocation

Tacoma also sits adjacent to the Puyallup reservation. Native baskets. Trade blankets. The artist’s Cylinders series takes inspiration from Navajo blankets. He was introduced to Navajo textiles while serving as an early instructor at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, arriving there in 1974 and establishing its first glass program.

“His natural propensity was always to teach, to learn, to travel, to explore, and he had a deep interest in Native American culture,” Leslie Chihuly said. “As a kid growing up in the Northwest, it was everywhere, and so in going (to IAIA), they recognized his talent, he recognized their authenticity.”

Numerous Native glassblowers have come through Chihuly’s Pilchuck Glass School north of Seattle since it opened in 1971, Preston Singletary among them. The artist so deeply influenced by Native art sharing his knowledge with successive generations of Native artists. The Chihuly’s now fund a full, four-year scholarship at IAIA. Chihuly also previously brought a glass blowing program to Taos Pueblo, the first.

The reciprocal connection between Native art, culture, Native artists and Chihuly comes together during “Clearly Indigenous: Native Visions Reimagined in Glass,” an exhibition exploring glass art as a medium for Indigenous stories, designs, and contemporary concerns. The exhibition traces 45 years of Native glass art showcasing approximately 120 artworks by 29 Indigenous artists, and Chihuly. The presentation can be seen at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York through May 29, 2026, before moving on.