Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner
"Venezia Aperto Vetro 1998: International New Glass,” Palazzo Ducale, Venice, October 16, 1998-January 16, 1999
"Yoichi Ohira: A Phenomenon in Glass: A Retrospective Exhibition," Barry Friedman Ltd., New York, September 19-November 9, 2002
“European Design Since 1985: Shaping the New Century,” Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, February 5-July 21, 2009
Rosa Barovier Mentasti, William Warmus and Suzanne Frantz, Yoichi Ohira: A Phenomenon in Glass, exh. cat., Barry Friedman Ltd., New York, 2002, illustrated pp. 117, 374
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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