Vivika (1910-1995) and Otto Heino (1915-2009) American, Signed Glazed Ceramic Bowl. Stunning dark blue glaze inside and out. Signed on base. 

Condition: Minor apologies and unintentional drips throughout. 

Size: 6 x 6 x 3 in. 

Otto and Vivika Heino were ceramic artists who collaborated as a husband-and-wife team for forty-five years, signing their pots Vivika + Otto regardless of who actually made them. Otto was born on April 20th, 1915 in East Hampton, Connecticut. He was one of twelve children born to Finnish immigrants who ran a dairy farm in the quiet countryside. He did not encounter art until serving with the U.S. Air Force in England during World War II. He was shot down twice over Germany but escaped to safety both times, due in part to his Teutonic name and appearance, and was placed on indefinite military leave after the second incident. He spent several days watching Bernard Leach throw pots, and upon his return to the United States he used the GI Bill to study ceramics at the League of New Hampshire Arts and Crafts in Concord, New Hampshire in 1949. There he met Vivika, his teacher, whom he was married to in 1950. Vivika was born Vivien Place on June 27th, 1910 in Caledonia, New York. In the mid-1930s, after earning a teaching degree at the Rochester Normal School, she spent two years with the Works Progress Administration Theatre Project, and headed the National Youth Administration in San Francisco. Discovering clay at this time, she studied at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute), and with Glen Lukens at the University of Southern California. Lukens, a highly respected ceramist renowned for his glazes, gave her the opportunity to explore colored clays and experiment with raw materials. Her pots were first exhibited at the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco. She was given the name Vivika by her Swedish teacher Margaret Gravandar while studying at the Swedish Applied Arts in San Francisco, and was eventually married under it. In 1941 Vivika received an M.F.A. from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, making her the second graduate from their program following Daniel Rhodes. She was already highly acclaimed by the time she met Otto, and in 1952 they moved to California where Vivika replaced Lukens as the head of the USC Ceramics Department during his three-year sabbatical. Otto became a teacher there as well, and they both acted as technical advisors for Twentieth Century Fox Studios, making pots for several period films including 1953’s “The Egyptian.” In 1955 Vivika was offered the head position of the ceramics department at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, where she remained for eight years. During that time they remodelled a store on Hoover Street into a studio and began successfully selling their original work directly to the public. Otto first worked full-time as a potter while Vivika taught, and each summer they switched roles. Vivika became a board member of the Southern California Designer Craftsmen, as well as a trustee for the American Craft Council. She traveled constantly to nearby states to help organize craft groups, and in 1963 she accepted an offer to teach at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. While there Otto established a home studio in Hopkinton, New Hampshire, and eventually they divided their time between there and a home in Ojai, California known as The Pottery, producing functional and decorative vessels as well as architectural commissions. Vivika passed away on September 1st, 1995, and Otto rarely worked again until his death on July 16th, 2009, both remembered by collector communities as one of the definitive power couples of the modern pottery movement.

Minor apologies and unintentional drips throughout.