Otto Heino; potter known for his robust glazed work
LOS ANGELES - Otto Heino, the Southern California master potter, educator, and symbol of the state’s midcentury studio crafts movement, has died. He was 94.
Mr. Heino died Thursday of acute renal failure at Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura, said Dr. George Gemmingen, a friend.
In collaboration with his wife, Vivika, and in the 14 years since her death, the Finnish-American Mr. Heino earned an international reputation for robust yet beautiful wheel-thrown stoneware with artistically applied glazes that included glossy cobalt blues, silky reds and turquoises, and raspy-feeling earth tones. In the mid-1990s, he became celebrated in Asia for the buttery yellow glaze that he and his wife had labored on for more than a decade. He said he had been offered millions for the formula but never sold it.
“Otto’s work is a wonderful blending of Scandinavian modernism and Japanese folk pottery,’’ said Jo Lauria, an author of the ceramics book “Color and Fire’’ (2000). “He had a macho relationship with clay, and it was a badge of honor to be able to throw huge pieces, but they were always functional, emphasizing the sensuality of the glaze, the way in which it catches the light and invites you to touch it.’’
In other respects, Mr. Heino’s handmade vessels, which retain the ridges his fingers formed when shaping the clay, exhibit a style that was wholly his own.
Still actively producing work for museums, international collectors and his own home gallery until his death, Mr. Heino could throw 100-pound mounds of clay into 24-inch wide platters. Without assistants or apprentices, he fired kilns of his own design, producing thousands of pieces a year. Those with the prized yellow glaze, popular during the Chin dynasty (265 to 420), sold for $25,000 and up.
“I am the oldest, richest potter in the world,’’ Mr. Heino told the Los Angeles Times in a 2008 interview.
Although he indulged a passion for cars, purchasing a
Mr. Heino was in East Hampton, Conn., the fifth of 12 children of Finnish immigrants August and Lena Heino. He was raised on a New Hampshire farm, where every child played a musical instrument; Otto’s was trombone. The large family survived the Depression raising dairy cattle and delivering milk. By the start of World War II, Mr. Heino had established a successful trucking business.
For five years, he served in the Army Air Corps as a crew chief and a B-17 wing-gunner, flying on the legendary Memphis Belle. In 40 missions, he downed 22 enemy planes. During this time, he changed his Finnish first name, Aho, to Otto, which, along with his blond hair and blue eyes, helped him survive when he was twice shot down over Germany.
On a furlough in England, the war-weary hero visited the pottery studio of Bernard Leach, who had introduced Japanese techniques to British ceramics. After observing the master at work, Gemmingen recalls, “Otto said, ‘If I live through this war, I am going to dedicate myself to this.’ ’’
