Yoichi Ohira

Yoichi Ohira
Colata di Lava n. 4” Vase
2005

Photo Credit: Barry Friedman, Ltd.

"Yoichi Ohira was born in Japan in 1946. In 1969, he graduated from the Kuwasawa Design School in Tokyo. During his studies there, Ohira read a novel set in Finland by Hiroyuki Itsuki, the well-known Japanese writer. This book introduced him to the fascinating world of art glass.

After graduating, Ohira became a glassblowing apprentice at the Kagami Crystal Company, Ltd. in Tokyo, where he worked for a year and a half. In 1971, he became a glassblower at a smaller glassworks in Chiba province, where he worked for one year.

Ohira moved to Venice in 1973, and enrolled in the Sculpture program at the Accademia di Belle Arti [Academy of Fine Arts]. That same year, he met Egidio Costantini of Fucina degli Angeli, known for his glass sculptures, and worked as one of his collaborators for many years. In 1978, Ohira graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arte with honors, and received the highest possible grade for his degrees thesis, The Aesthetics of Glass.

Upon graduation, Ohira began to work in sculpture, producing works made of a combination of welded iron with plate glass, exhibiting them in group and one-man shows, mainly in Italy.

His collaboration with La Fucina degli Angeli introduced him to Murano glass circles, and in 1987 he was invited as a designer to create a series of art glass collections for the de Majo glassworks of Murano. In the same year, he won the “Premio Selezione� of the Murano Prize.

He has been working as an independent artist in the glass field since the early 1990s, producing one-of-a-kind pieces in collaboration with the best Murano master glassmakers."

Barry Friedman, Ltd. website. accessed August 9, 2009. http://barryfriedmanltd.com/artists/yoichi_bio.html

"His work is produced by Anfora di Renzo Ferro, and is represented in Europe and the United States by Barry Friedman Ltd. His awards include the Premio Murano “Premio Selezione” prize (received in 1987), and the Rakow Commission from the Corning Museum of Glass, New York (2001)."

Unknown. Merrell Publishers, London and NY. "Yoichi Ohira." Indiana Museum of Art exhibit "European Design since 1985 Shaping the Century." website accessed August 9, 2009. http://www.imamuseum.org/exhibitions/european-design/designers/yoichi-ohira

2002 Rita Reif:

"YOICHI OHIRA has worked in glass for more than 30 years, first as a glass blower in his native Tokyo, then, since 1973, as a glass designer on the island of Murano in Venice. While not the first Japanese artist to produce glass there, he was the only one to remain and make Venice his home.

Today, Mr. Ohira's Murano glass, a fusion of Asian forms and Venetian surfaces, has attracted an international following. Interest was spurred in this country by two one-man exhibitions in 2000 and 2001 at the Barry Friedman gallery in Manhattan. Both shows sold out.

Mr. Friedman, who represents the artist internationally but not in Japan, said Mr. Ohira's works were now owned by scores of collectors and seven museums in the United States, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Craft Museum, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and the Corning Glass Museum in upstate New York.

Now Mr. Friedman has organized an exhibition of 200 objects that is four times larger than either of his previous shows. Half the pieces on view were lent by collectors and are not for sale; the rest are new works priced at $3,800 to $14,500.

''I don't know another market in the contemporary craft field that is as strong as glass,'' Mr. Friedman said. ''There are so many clubs and organizations of glass collectors -- more than 10 nationwide -- that are helping to fuel interest in contemporary work.''

Curiously, Mr. Ohira's works were not recognized until recently, possibly because the artist, who is 55, never sought public attention. He lives modestly in Venice in a one-bedroom apartment, a 15-minute trip to the island of Murano in the Venetian lagoon. But his life and work began to change in 1992, when he was invited to put on an exhibition by the art gallery of the Isetan department store in Tokyo. To produce the objects for the show, he quit his job as the chief designer at a Murano factory and started making one-of-a-kind pieces, hiring two glassmakers to help him at the Anfora glassworks on Murano. The two men, Livio Serena, a master glass blower and Giacomo Barbini, a master glass cutter, have produced his glass ever since.

''Working with them, I was able for the first time to make the kind of glass objects I had dreamed of creating,'' Mr. Ohira said. ''The exhibition in Tokyo was a big success.''

At the time, Mr. Ohira was focused almost exclusively on producing transparent glass objects, a look that was dominating the field of contemporary glass. But he was eager to experiment, so he switched to ancient techniques, making opaque glass in forms inspired by Chinese porcelains. He chose strong Song Dynasty shapes, like spheres and gourds, combining them with narrow necks and dynamic Venetian surfaces that pulse with brilliant colors, abstract patterns, contrasting textures and jewel-like luminescence.

Mr. Ohira is a hands-on designer, a trait common among studio artists and one that is increasingly seen in the factories of Murano. He starts by selecting the opaque and transparent canes (rods of glass) that he uses in all his objects. He then cuts them to the desired thickness and length and assembles the pieces on a flat metal sheet, as if he were preparing a pizza. Now he adds the sausagelike slices of canes called murrhines and sprinkles the surface with powders for glitter. The ''pizza'' goes into the furnace, where the canes fuse and the glass softens so that the object can be blown.

Mr. Ohira is deft at devising more than a score of different traditional surface treatments, many of which are not at all what they seem to be. A vase in the shape of a double gourd looks as if red ink had been dribbled down its snow-white surface, when in fact the vase is made entirely of red and white glass canes of varying sizes. And a tall, cone-shaped black vase, which appears to be painted on the outside with white petals and on the inside with red petals, is a tour de force of white murrhines coated on the inside with melted red glass beads.

Working in Murano factories for so many years as a member of a team made Mr. Ohira sensitive to the roles of everyone in the production process. ''I am a foreign guest of this community,'' he said. ''My works are made by my hosts, the master glassmakers at the Anfora factory who work with me on each piece.''

To acknowledge this collaboration, the designer took the unusual step of asking Mr. Serena and Mr. Barbini to add their signatures to his on the pieces they produce. ''By signing my name only, I would be deceiving whoever acquires my works,'' he said. ''We so-called artists or designers of glass must always ask ourselves: 'Who gave us these forms? Who gave us these surfaces?' They should share the credit for what they make.''

Mr. Ohira began painting and drawing when he was 6 and later, at the urging of his parents, studied fashion design at the Kuwasawa Design School in Tokyo. They hoped he would join the family business, manufacturing women's clothes, which his mother designed and his father produced. But in 1969, after completing his studies, he followed a dream he had had since he was a boy and became a glass blower at the Kagami Crystal Company there. Four years later, after seeing a television show on Murano, he went to Venice to study sculpture. Within a few months he was working part-time in Murano, which he continued to do while studying for the next five years.

Several of the newer pieces in the show reveal his painterly instincts, especially a black and red pear-shaped vase from 2001, a work that looks like something by an Abstract Expressionist artist.

''Perhaps I will continue to develop my painterly work,'' he said. ''I always compose images in my head that I have never painted but may realize in the future. But for me the most important things I do in glass are experiments. I made that vase last year, and my next approach may be quite different. I always want to find something new in my glass. Today I made four pieces, and each one was different from all the others. They were all experiments, and that is exciting.''"

Reif, R. "From Glass Dreams, A Dazzling Reality." September 22, 2002. The New York Times. accessed August 9, 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/22/arts/art-architecture-from-glass-dreams-a-dazzling-reality.html