Mary Shaffer discusses Pilchuck’s origins. Oral history interview with Mary Shaffer by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, March 21, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 02:03.

Mary Shaffer: So Dale [Chihuly] had the idea, just like Richard Yelle wanted to start up a public glass place, Dale had the idea of starting a glass school to be near his mother, because his mother lived in Seattle, and she—you know, his brother had died when he was quite young. So my husband Hardu [Keck] helped him write the proposal along with another RISD professor, both of those together—I forget his name offhand—helped Dale write the stuff. And we would tell Dale little tricks like, ‘Oh, always fly—’ I would say, God, because my father was a captain for Pan-American, so I would get to fly first class and I would sit next to these amazing people that would usually offer me a job. And so I said, ‘Dale, fly first class, you really meet a lot of people that can help you.’ So anyhow, that was one thing that he did and he did get a lot of connections that way, but. So Pilchuck was started, as you probably know, because a lot of other people know it better, and they made their own houses—and Toots [Zynsky] was one of the students that went out with him, and Buster Simpson was there. Fritz Dreisbach was there. A bunch of people you probably know. I think Dan Dailey was one of the early people out there—so they went out and they built their houses, their little houses out of leftover materials and started this glass school, which was fantastic. And then once it really got going with more money and more space, then he decided he wanted to upscale it. So that’s when he decided he wanted to have visiting artists there that would do their own work. So that was great.