Otto Heino (c1915-2009) Master
Listed Ceramist. Ovoid Form Arts & Crafts Style Vase. Dark Brown Black Glaze- Shibui Style Excellent Vase. Marked on bottom
"Otto"-"01". Hand Done on wheel hand glazed all by Otto Heino. Dark Brown with Black Splashes of glaze and color. Perfect Example of Otto Heino Art Pottery and A Must in any
Art Pottery Collection. Some glaze pops and glaze applied thin on bottom portion of Ovoid shape vase all done during manufacturing and firing process-Good CONDITION-NO CHIPS-NO CRACKS-NO RESTORATION!! MEASURES: 6 1/2" x 6".
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BIOGRAPHY: ------------------------------------------------- Otto Heino, the Ojai-based master potter, educator and symbol of the
midcentury California studio crafts movement who along with his late
wife, Vivika, reformulated a lost-to-the-ages Chinese glaze that made
him a multimillionaire.
The Finnish American Heino, who worked in collaboration with his wife
until her death in 1995, earned an international reputation for robust
yet beautiful wheel-thrown stoneware with artistically applied glazes
that included glossy cobalt blues, silky reds and raspy earth tones.
In the mid-1990s, he became celebrated in Asia for a buttery yellow
glaze that he and his wife had labored on for more than a decade. He
claimed to have been offered millions for the formula but never sold it.
"Otto's work is a wonderful blending of Scandinavian modernism and
Japanese folk pottery," said Jo Lauria, a coauthor of the ceramics book
"Color and Fire" (2000). "He had a macho relationship with clay, and it
was a badge of honor to be able to throw huge pieces, but they were
always functional, emphasizing the sensuality of the glaze, the way in
which it catches the light and invites you to touch it."
Heino's handmade vessels, which retain the ridges his fingers formed
when shaping the clay, exhibit a style that was wholly his own.
Gerard O'Brien, owner of the Reform Gallery in Los Angeles, which sells
the Heinos' pieces, called the potter's work "hearty and gutsy" and
"ruggedly American."
Still actively producing work for museums,
international collectors and his home gallery until his death, Heino
could throw 100-pound mounds of clay into 24-inch-wide platters. Without
assistants or apprentices, he fired kilns of his own design, producing
thousands of pieces a year. Those with the prized yellow glaze, popular
during the Chin dynasty (AD 265 to 420), sold for $25,000 and up.
"I am the oldest, richest potter in the world,".
Though he indulged a passion for cars, purchasing a Rolls-Royce and a
Bentley, Heino was also a philanthropist, donating his work and funds to
ceramic institutions and the Ventura County Museum of History and Art,
which staged exhibitions of his work in 1995 and 2005.
He was even more generous with his time, teaching, demonstrating and mentoring generations of potters from around the world.
Christy Johnson, director and curator of the American Museum of Ceramic
Art in Pomona, said the Heinos "represented a time when the artist's
character was considered to be part of the beauty of their pieces. Their
devotion to the work, to each other, and to teaching contributed to the
fine quality of the work."
Don Pilcher, a potter who studied
under the Heinos at Chouinard Art Institute, said they were devoted to
their craft and to passing along their knowledge as a legacy.
"They treated me, and others, like a son," he wrote in an e-mail.
"Watching Otto fire a kiln was a master class in care, precision and
patience, I never saw anybody more reluctant to turn off a kiln. It was
as if he were having an affair with the fire."
Otto Heino was
born April 20, 1915, in East Hampton, Conn., the fifth of 12 children of
Finnish immigrants August and Lena Heino. He was raised on a New
Hampshire farm where every child played a musical instrument; Otto's was
trombone. The large family survived the Great Depression raising dairy
cattle and delivering milk. By the start of World War II, Heino had
established a successful trucking business.
For five years, he served in the Army Air Forces as a fighter plane crew chief and a B-17 gunner.
During this time, he changed his Finnish first name, Aho, to Otto,
which, along with his blond hair and blue eyes, helped him survive when
he was twice shot down over Germany.
On a furlough in England,
the war-weary hero visited the pottery studio of Bernard Leach, who had
introduced Japanese techniques to British ceramics.
After
observing the master at work, Gemmingen recalls, "Otto said, 'If I live
through this war I am going to dedicate myself to this.' "
After the war, Heino attended the League of New Hampshire Arts and
Crafts on the GI Bill. He married his pottery instructor, Vivika
Timeriasieff, in 1950.
Two years later, they moved to Los
Angeles when she succeeded glazing master Glen Lukens in a teaching post
at USC. Heino's mechanical skills and education in ceramics helped him
land a job with NASA working on rockets and space capsules.
In the mid-1950s, the couple lived and worked in a Victorian house on Hoover Street in Los Angeles.
"They opened a shop that sold only handmade pots and people told them
they were crazy," said O'Brien, "but they were successful and inspired
other people to do crafts as a way of life."
After a stint on
the East Coast in the 1960s, the Heinos returned to California and
purchased the Ojai home of a former student, acclaimed ceramist Beatrice
Wood, and in 1973 established a gallery, The Pottery.
Heino
earned the 1978 gold medal at the Sixth Biennial International de
Ceramique in Vallauris, France, for a pot with two birds perched on the
rim.
He and Vivika showed their work at the Smithsonian
Institution in Washington, D.C., the Los Angeles County Museum of Art,
and the American Craft Museum in New York, now called the Museum of Arts
& Design.
Even after having a pacemaker installed in 2008,
Heino remained indefatigable, telling The Times, "Never hurry, never
worry. If you're negative, you'll never make it."
The Pottery, which had been open to the public, has been closed.