Born in 1941 in Tacoma, Washington, Dale Chihuly was introduced to glass when studying interior design at the University of Washington. Chihuly received his M.S. in Harvey Littleton's seminal glass program at the University of Wisconsin in 1967. He continued his glass studies at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and was awarded an M.F.A. in 1968.

After a Fullbright Fellowship, working and observing in the Venini factory in Venice, Chihuly returned to RISD to establish and head a glass department. In 1971 Chihuly co-founded Pilchuck Glass School, fifty miles north of Seattle. Now considered "an international glass communications center," it attracts students and teachers from around the world. Chihuly has been the recipient of many awards, including honorary doctorates from the University of Puget Sound, The Rhode Island School of Design, and the California College of Arts and Crafts. He is a Fellow of the American Craft Council and had received the Governor's Art Awards from both Rhode Island and Washington. He has also been honored with two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Council for the Arts Visual Artist's Award, and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award. In 1992 he was named the first National Living Treasure in the United States. And his works is included in over one hundred seventy museum collections from New York to Kyoto and in several published monographs.

In 1988 Henry Geldzahler curated an exhibition of Chihuly's Persians for the Dia Art Foundation. Also in 1988, inspired by Venetian glass of the Art Deco period, Chihuly began a new body of work with the Venetian master Lino Tagliapietro. In 1992 Chihuly opened the year with a special installation of Niijima Floats at the American Craft Museum in New York. In 1994 Portland Press published Chihuly Baskets, which presented that series along with reproductions of Chihuly's own collection of Northwest Native baskets, a form which inspired his own baskets of handblown glass. Another series, Seaforms, was published in 1995, and a tour of the Seaforms exhibition began its national tour at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., in February 1996. One of his most notable public installations can be seen in Union Station in Tacoma, Washington, which has as its centerpiece a cobalt blue Chandelier. This installation led Chihuly to pursue what may well turn out to be the greatest accomplishment of his career, "Chihuly over Venice" - a two year-long aesthetic and cultural penomenon. Chihuly and his team of glassblowers have set up installations abroad that included collaborations with the artisans in the famed Iittala glass works of Nuutajarvi, Finland, workers in the VitroCrisa factory in Monterrey, Mexico, and artisans in Venice, Italy; Waterford, Ireland; and the Japanese island of Niijima.

In July of 1999, Chihuly mounted his most ambitious exhibition to date: Chihuly in the Light of Jerusalem 2000. With support teams from Seattle and Israel he created 15 installations within the stone walls of an ancient military fortress, currently known as the Tower of David Museum of the History of Jerusalem. In September of 1999, Chihuly traveled to the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, to unveil an 18 foot chandelier gracing the main entrance of the Museum.