Hi Bill,

Thank you for contacting Mearto with your appraisal inquiry.

According to the National Gallery of Art artist archives, Dale Chihuly (born 1941 in Tacoma, WA) became the most famous ornate glass maker of the late 20th century in America. He received a B.A. degree from the University of Washington at Seattle and an M.F.A. in 1968 from the Rhode Island School of Design. From 1967 to 1980, he was Chairman there of the Department of Glassblowing. In 1971, he was a co-founder of the Pilchuck Glass Center in Stanwood, Washington near Seattle.

In 1968, after receiving a Fulbright Fellowship, he went to work at the Venini glass factory in Venice. There he observed the team approach to blowing glass, which is critical to the way he works today. In 1971, Chihuly co-founded Pilchuck Glass School in Washington State. With this international glass center, Chihuly has led the avant-garde in the development of glass as a fine art.

His work is included in more than 200 hundred museum collections worldwide. He has been the recipient of many awards, including twelve honorary doctorates and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Chihuly has created more than a dozen well-known series of works, among them Cylinders and Baskets in the 1970s; Seaforms, Macchia, Venetians, and Persians in the 1980s; Niijima Floats and Chandeliers in the 1990s; and Fiori in the 2000s.

The essence of his Macchia lies in color freedom, spontaneity, and emotional exuberance. The word macchia comes from the Italian term for “spot” or “stain,” and the series was conceived by Dale Chihuly in the early 1980s as an explosion of color unconstrained by traditional glassmaking rules.

Chihuly reportedly began the series after realizing that there was at least one color combination he disliked. He challenged himself to use every color combination possible, even clashing or seemingly discordant pairings. The result was a body of work that celebrated unpredictability and visual intensity rather than harmony in the classical sense.

The forms themselves are large, ruffled vessels with dramatically undulating rims, often lined internally with contrasting speckled colors. Black-and-white “lip wraps” around the edges heighten the sense of movement and define the contours like drawn lines in a painting. The pieces feel organic — like exotic flowers, sea life, or fabric caught in motion — yet they are fundamentally about the expressive possibilities of molten glass.

The Macchia series was also significant technically. To achieve such vivid colors in large forms, Chihuly and his team often used opaque white glass as an intermediary layer because many colors chemically reacted poorly when directly combined. This technical innovation allowed for unprecedented chromatic experimentation.

Artistically, the series marked a turning point where Chihuly moved decisively away from restrained vessel traditions toward sculptural spectacle and painterly expression. The Macchia works helped establish his reputation for transforming glass into immersive contemporary art centered on light, scale, gesture, and pure visual sensation.

Single-vessel Macchia typically sell from anywhere from $2,000-10,000 depending on the size and tend to have taller sides and are closed; the fact that yours is flatter and has an open connecting "stem" indicates to me that this was probably part of a multi-vessel set originally.

If this were to come to auction, it would probably sell in the range of $2,000-4,000.

Based on the photos and information provided, and subject to examination, this is:

Dale Chihuly (American, b 1941)
Seaform Macchia in blue and white
10 inches overall height, 17 inches wide, 21 inches deep
CONDITION: This appears to be in good condition
PROVENANCE: Inherited
$2,000-4,000*
*represents a fair-market value for auction purposes; retail or asking price may vary.

Please let us know if you have additional items to appraise, or questions/concerns, and thank you again for using Mearto.
~ Delia