Yoichi ohira biography of williams

Yoichi Ohira (1946–2022)

Yoichi Ohira, a Japanese glass artist who resided in Venice for over twenty-five years until his passing, challenged the conventional attributes of glass art—typically hard, fragile, cold, and weighty.

His luminous blown glass vessels offered a tactile exception, inviting viewers to handle them like Wunderkammer specimens. These small, lightweight creations beckoned exploration, showcasing Ohira's abstracted design vocabulary inspired by gemstones, polished ivory, veined rocks, shimmering water, agate, moss, and lichens.

Comparing Ohira to Emile Gallé for his ability to emulate the natural world in glass, his work also draws parallels to Jean Dunand's bronze vessels, Japanese rokusho patina, and Otto Natzler's volcanic glazes—a remarkable convergence of diverse media translated into glass.

A graduate of Tokyo's Kuwasawa Design School in 1969, Ohira embarked on a glassblowing apprenticeship at the Kagami Crystal Compa