2017
Blown glass
Gift of Suzanne and Walter Scott
Located on Level Four in the Chihuly Sanctuary, Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center.
These large spheres—up to forty inches in diameter and weighing sixty pounds—have surfaces richly colored with gold and silver leaf and foil. They are named for small green and blue Japanese fishing floats Chihuly found as a child on the shores of Puget Sound and the island of Niijima, Japan, which he visited in 1989. In Chihuly’s oeuvre, the Niijima Floats are the most direct expression of the glassblowing process, since the sphere is the form most naturally created on the blowpipe.