Dazzling Glass

Even by the recherche standards of Rancho Mirage, glass artist Dale Chihuly has remade Madeline and Edward S. Redstone’s contemporary winter estate into a singular oasis. In the ornamental pond behind the residence float glass spheres bigger than basketballs: yolk yellow wrapped in a filigree of red, cobalt blue clouded by cosmic green and deep pomegranate swirled with gold, to describe just a few. On the far shore, a humble canoe holds a huge arrangement of graceful glass petals and tendrils.

“It’s his shapes; it’s his colors,” Madeline Redstone says, explaining her eight-year infatuation with Chihuly’s work and why she chose the Seattle-based co-founder of the Pilchuck Glass School to create a work to complement her sculpture garden and the view of the San Bernardino Mountains. “The lake makes the property have more of an ending to it,” Chihuly says. “The focal point now becomes the installation.”

Fragility has always added a measure of awe to Chihuly’s spectacular installations--such as the crimson chandeliers once suspended over the canals of Venice, Italy, and the floral sculptures now hanging above the lobby at the new Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas--but the Rancho Mirage pieces have weathered well so far. “We had 40, 50, 60 mile-per-hour winds recently, and they survived,” Redstone says. She keeps nearby palm trees scrupulously trimmed to reduce the threat of falling fronds.

Fifty-seven-year-old Chihuly, one of four Americans to have been honored with a one-person show at the Louvre, is world-renowned for his glass-blowing artistry. Still, he approached this project as a fisherman might, casting his work in the water to achieve the right blend of color, light and form. His assistants and a curator from the Palm Desert Imago Gallery then took care of on-site positioning, slogging through the 3-foot-deep pond in fishing gaiters to tether the globes, which were originally inspired by Japanese fishing floats.

Today the glass walls of the couple’s house welcome Chihuly’s plein-air vision inside. “You can see it during the day, at night,” Redstone says. “It becomes part of the interior design and the architecture.” A half-ton rose-colored Chihuly chandelier in the hallway contributes to the visual theme.

Even the pond’s permanent residents have taken a liking to the Chihuly floats. “We have koi,” Redstone says, “and they’ll lodge under them in the sun and warm weather. They’re very attracted to the colors.”

photographs by juliane backmann

Photographed by David Glombf