Dale Chihuly Signed 1979 Early Basket with Shard Drawing Handblown Glass

Artist: Dale Chihuly
Title: Early Basket with Shard drawing
Medium: Handblown glass
Size: 6 ½”× 6 w × 5 3/4'”
Year: 1979
Inscription: Etched “Chihuly 1979” on underside
Condition: Very good condition overall, please request a full report for condition details
Documentation: Includes Gallery Certificate of Authenticity

The American glass sculptor Dale Chihuly is well-known for his innovative techniques for creating handblown glass sculptures. His glass practice is a departure from traditional symmetrical and perfectly formed vessels. Instead, his works embrace asymmetry and irregular shapes to create unique sculptural forms.

Directly inspired by a visit to the History Museum at the Washington State Historical Society, more specifically the Northwest Coast Indian baskets on display, Chihuly began his series Baskets in 1977. These new works explored how fire, gravity, and centrifugal force worked together to create a beautiful vessel. Usually grouped in sets of smaller pieces nested inside larger wide-mouth ones, his earlier Baskets sometimes were standalone pieces.

This Early Basket with Shard drawing belongs to Chihuly’s second major series, Baskets. Inspired by the beauty of Native American weaving and basketry, the artwork captures the grace of slumped and sagging forms with thin and undulating walls. Notably, the shard drawing embraces Chihuly’s revolutionary glassblowing technique of “pick-up drawing.” This method uses glass thread rods to fully integrate a design instead of having them laid or inlaid separately on the surface.

Chihuly's Early Basket with Shard drawing includes a gallery certificate of authenticity. The work is etched on the underside with “Chihuly 1979.” Furthermore, the artwork is in very good condition overall. Please request a full report for condition details.

About Dale Chihuly

One of the most famous contemporary glass artists in the world, Dale Chihuly is best known for his monumental sculptures and installations. He is the name behind the spectacular ceiling at the Bellagio’s flower garden in Las Vegas and the creator of the Rotunda Chandelier at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Glass works of Dale Chihuly are considered some of the most desired collectibles between the decorative arts devotees today. Despite his initial indifference towards education, Chihuly has spent a lot of time in school, obtaining both scientific and artistic degree in sculpture from prestigious graduate schools. He displayed a proclivity for interior design and craft early on, but his true passion was always in the glass. He was a Fulbright Fellow in the late 1960s and an apprentice at the Venini Glass Factory in Venice. Mastering the art of Murano glasswork, he continued the experiments with glassblowing and thus became one of the people who brought the ancient art of glassblowing back into the spotlight on an international scale.

Monumental and small-scale artwork of Dale Chihuly is present in over 200 most renowned decorative art collections today, while the artist holds twelve honorary doctorates!

The most illustrious series in his work are Cylinders and Baskets he created in the 1970s; Macchia, Venetians, and Persians from the 1980s, Niijima Floats and Chandeliers created in the 1990s; and a more recent one, Fiori from the 2000s.

For over 30 years, Dale Chihuly has been acting as an artistic director of his team of craftsmen, since he was incapacitated in two accidents, which left him blind in one eye and incapable of holding the blowing tube. This change allowed him to see the possibilities of glass work on a broader scale, while still maintaining his recognizable style.