Yoichi Ohira - Design New York Wednesday, July 29, 2020 | Phillips

Design

New York Auction 29 July 2020

  • Provenance

    Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner

  • 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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39

Yoichi Ohira

"Mosaico con polvere e a ghiaccio" vase

2001
Hand-blown glass canes with murrine and powder inserts.
8 1/2 in. (21.6 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/Thursday 29-11-2001/murano and with artist's cipher.

Estimate
$12,000 - 18,000 

Sold for $18,750

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Design

New York Auction 29 July 2020