Goode Glass FINAL (6-26-23) - Flipbook - Page 30
Yoichi Ohira
T
HE EXCEPTIONAL Japanese designer Yoichi Ohira (born 1946) worked and lived
in Venice for nearly 40 years. Graduating from Tokyo’s Kuwasawa Design School in
1969, he apprenticed at the Kagami Crystal Company, Ltd., then worked in fashion.
A deep fascination with Venetian glassmaking traditions, prompted by a visit to
Venice, led him to complete his studies at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia in 1978 with a
thesis on the aesthetics of glass. Following his early successes in designing for the storied local
glass industry, he set up his own studio practice and collaborated with the most skilled Venetian
craftsmen to execute his intricate sculptural forms. Glass maestros and frequent collaborators
Andrea Zilio (born 1966), Livio Serena (born 1942), and Giacomo Barbini (born 1951) — the
latter executing the complex surface cutting and carving — were acknowledged by co-signing
completed works.
A thoroughly modern expression in Venetian glass, this ovoid sculptural vessel has its roots in
Venetian glassmaking traditions and Japanese design aesthetic. Venetian glass is historically
known to be thinly blown, transparent, and often extravagantly hot-sculpted. After World War I,
industrial advances in technology and changing consumer taste impelled Venetian glassmakers to
explore the drama of thicker, more boldly colored, and opaque shapes. Ohira harnesses complex
traditional techniques like mosaic glass, filigree networks, and colorful inlays (intarsia) into
blown forms distinguished by a restrained Japanese design aesthetic. Cut lenses and window-like
polished panels in his work direct interior views of carefully placed, intricate patterns through
thick transparent glass. Many of his sculptural works are inspired by the specific urban and natural
environment of the lagoon city. In his series Calle di Venezia, the artist explores the vertical shapes
and changing light encountered in the narrow streets and passages crisscrossing the city. Ohira’s
extensive technical knowledge and unique aesthetic sensibility enable him to masterfully capture
the essence of Venice in glass — the opacity of its bricked buildings contrasts with glimpses of
intense transparent color that invoke the stained glass windows of a church or the shimmering
water of a canal in the distance.
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