Yoichi Ohira - Design New York Tuesday, December 15, 2015 | Phillips

Design

New York Auction 15 December 2015 1pm

  • Provenance

    Odetto Lastra, Union City, New Jersey
    Barry Friedman, Ltd., New York

  • Exhibited

    "Canti del Cuore," Fine Art Salon, Isetan, Tokyo, 2001
    "Yoichi Ohira: A Retrospective Exhibition," Barry Friedman Ltd., New York, 2002

  • Literature

    Rosa Barovier Mentasti, William Warmus and Suzanne Frantz, Yoichi Ohira: A Phenomenon in Glass, exh. cat., Barry Friedman Ltd., New York, 2002, illustrated pp. 271, 386

  • Catalogue Essay

    Glass art – hard, fragile, cold, and often heavy – is not usually designed to be handled. Yoichi Ohira’s luminous blown glass vessels, however, offer an exception to this trend. They are small and light enough to be turned in one’s hands like a Wunderkammer specimen, inviting the viewer to admire his abstracted design vocabulary of gemstones, polished ivory, veined rocks, shimmering water, agate, moss, and lichens. Ohira has been compared to Emile Gallé for his ability to emulate the natural world in glass. Comparisons may also be drawn to Jean Dunand’s bronze vessels, Japanese rokusho patina, and Otto Natzler’s volcanic glazes – a wide range of media to be translated into glass.

    Yoichi Ohira graduated from the Kuwasawa Design School, Tokyo, in 1969. Shortly thereafter he took up a glassblowing apprenticeship at the Kagami Crystal Company, Ltd. In 1973 Ohira moved to Venice to study at the Accademia di Belle Arti; he graduated in 1978, earning the highest possible grade for his thesis, The Aesthetics of Glass. In the late 1980s Ohira began collaborating with Murano glassmakers, earning the “Premio Selezione” of the Premio Murano in 1987.

    Collaboration has always been central to Ohira’s practice; he has written, "If I might compare myself to a composer...I could then compare Murano glassmakers to singers or instrumentalists. Who in the music world would erase the performers' names? Thus, my pieces in all fairness bear, in addition to my signature, the names of those who carried out my instructions: the glassblower and glasscarver, with the date and the place the piece was made."

  • Artist Biography

    Yoichi Ohira

    Japanese • 1946

    Glass art – hard, fragile, cold and often heavy – is not typically designed to be handled. Yoichi Ohira's luminous blown glass vessels, however, offer an exception to this trend. They are small and light enough to be turned in one's hands like a Wunderkammer specimen, inviting the viewer to admire his abstracted design vocabulary of gemstones, polished ivory, veined rocks, shimmering water, agate, moss and lichens. Ohira has been compared to Emile Gallé for his ability to emulate the natural world in glass. Comparisons may also be drawn to Jean Dunand's bronze vessels, Japanese rokusho patina and Otto Natzler's volcanic glazes – an impressive range of media to be translated into glass.

    Yoichi Ohira graduated from the Kuwasawa Design School, Tokyo in 1969. Shortly thereafter he took up a glassblowing apprenticeship at the Kagami Crystal Company, Ltd. In 1973 Ohira moved to Venice to study at the Accademia di Belle Arti; he graduated in 1978 earning the highest possible grade for his thesis, "The Aesthetics of Glass." In the late 1980s Ohira began collaborating with Murano glassmakers, earning the "Premio Selezione" of the Premio Murano in 1987.

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Property from an East Coast Collection

166

Yoichi Ohira

Unique "Rosso e Nero" vase from the "Polvere" series

2001
Hand-blown glass canes with powder inserts, polished surface.
7 1/2 in. (19.1 cm) high
Executed by Livio Serena, master blower, and Giacomo Barbini, master cutter and grinder, Anfora, Murano, Italy. Underside incised with artist's cipher and Yoichi Ohira/m° L. Serena/m° G. Barbini/1 / 1 unico/Thursday 14-06-2001/murano.

Estimate
$12,000 - 18,000 

Sold for $27,500

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Design

New York Auction 15 December 2015 1pm