I found out a fascinating (and extremely exciting!) bit of information while in Edinburgh last week. I had visited the Victoria and Albert Museum two weeks prior with some girls in the program, and while there, Hannah (another Tacoma local) and I commented that the glass chandelier at the entrance to the V&A looked very much like a Chihuly piece. However, we dismissed the idea, thinking that Chihuly wasn't that well-known.
Turns out, Chihuly is considerably more famous than we thought, and the glass chandelier sure enough is a Chihuly piece! Although Londoners describe Dale Chihuly as a "Seattle artist", those of us from the Puget Sound know better...and we're pretty proud to claim him in Tacoma.
Here is a link to an article about how the V&A cleans Chihuly's glass chandelier.
And here are two interesting little facts about Chihuly:
Chihuly wears his eye patch because of an accident he had here in London.
Chihuly has permanent collections all over the States, Canada, The United Arab Emirates, and England, but the place with the MOST Chihuly permanent collections is none other than Washington State (which, of course, is absolutely fitting), including collections at UPS and PLU. Out of that, Tacoma has the greatest number of his collections, with a total of 6 to be found around the city. I assume that the glass bridge is being lumped in with the glass museum.
My senior portrait for high school was taken in front of Chihuly's Persian Glass in the Mary Baker Russel music building at PLU 3 years ago.
I like to go around bragging to people that "that chandelier is by Chihuly; he's from Tacoma; my dad used to deliver his mail." (Okay, so I don't really tell people that...much.)
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