Mille Fiori

In this series the artist has revisited and refined many of the forms and techniques that he developed earlier in his career. In the early 2000s, this series evolved into a new type of installation called Mille Fiori, Italian for “a thousand flowers,” in which the artist composed groupings of fiori on a platform to create an “indoor garden” for the Tacoma Art Museum.

Chihuly’s Fiori demonstrate the artist’s penchant for organic, free flowing forms that often reference the natural world, as is evident by their names – green grass, herons, reeds, marlins, and trumpet flowers. Many of the vertical forms in this installation were made in Finland during annual trips made by Chihuly and his glassblowing team. Tallest among them are the iridescent lavender colored Neodymium Reeds. To create the long, tubular shape of a Reed, one glassblower is elevated in a mechanical lift while blowing through the pipe to encourage the form to stretch, while another pulls the glass toward the ground.