Yoichi Ohira - Design: Online Auction New York Wednesday, July 26, 2023 | Phillips
  • Provenance

    Collection of the artist
    Barry Friedman Ltd., New York
    Wright, Chicago, "Design," June 8, 2017, lot 405
    Acquired from the above by the present owner

  • Literature

    Barry Friedman, ed., Yoichi Ohira: A Phenomenon in Glass, New York, 2002, illustrated pp. 224, 383

  • 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 a Pennsylvania Collection

14

Vase, from the "Metamorfosi" series

2000
Blown and wheel-carved glass with canes, mirrune, and powder inserts.
6 1/8 in. (15.6 cm) high
Executed by Livio Serena, master glassblower, and Giacomo Barbini, master cutter and grinder, Murano, Italy. Underside incised Yoichi Ohira/m° L. Serena/m° G. Barbini/1 / 1 unico/murano/Friday 17-03-00.

Estimate
$4,000 - 6,000 

Sold for $21,590

Contact Specialist

Benjamin Green
Associate Specialist
Associate Head of Sale
bgreen@phillips.com
+1 917 207 9090

Design: Online Auction

26 July - 2 August 2023