Wright Auction

Ceramicists Otto and Vivika Heino first met in 1949 at the League of New Hampshire Arts and Crafts in Concord, New Hampshire – Vivika was the teacher and Otto her student, and the pair married in 1950. Prior to her tenure in New Hampshire, Vivika had studied ceramics at the San Francisco Art Institute and, notably, with Glen Lukens at the University of Southern California. For his part, Otto first became interested in clay while on military leave in England, where he encountered ceramicist Bernard Leach throwing pots. 

Shortly after marrying, the Heinos moved to Southern California. Vivika subsumed Glen Lukens' duties as the head of the USC ceramics department while he was away on leave, and would stay with the university for three years. She was then offered a position reorganizing Chouinard's ceramics department, which she accepted. It was during this period that she and Otto began selling their own ceramic works directly to the public from a storefront on Hoover St. Their works became recognized and cherished for smooth, simple lines and for Otto's prodigious ability with glazes – in particular, his yellow glaze, for which he is most well-known. 

The couple would criss-cross the United States several more times throughout their lives: in 1963, when Vivika joined the Rhode Island School of Design, and again ten years later, when they would move back to California. This time, they settled in Ojai, where they purchased the former McAndrew Road studio of Beatrice Wood, who had once been their student. They continued to work together from this studio, which they named The Pottery, until Vivika's death in 1995. Otto continued to teach and host friends and ceramic devotees until his death in 2009. Through their collaborative partnership of more than four decades, the Heinos left a lasting mark on American ceramics –with the hundreds of vessels they made, and in the future generations of ceramicists they influenced as students.