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Otto Heino

Otto Heino was born April 20, 1915, in East Hampton, Connecticut, the fifth of 12 children of Finnish immigrants August and Lena Heino. By the start of World War II, Heino had established a successful trucking business. For five years, he served in the Army Air Forces as a fighter plane crew chief and a B-17 gunner.

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 “Otto said, “If I live through this war I am going to dedicate myself to this!”

After the war, Heino attended the League of New Hampshire Arts and Crafts and married his pottery instructor, Vivika Timeriasieff, in 1950. Two years later, Heino’s mechanical skills and education in ceramics helped him land a job with NASA working on rockets and space capsules.

The Heinos returned to California and purchased the Ojai home of a former student, acclaimed ceramist Beatrice Wood, and in 1973 established a gallery, The Pottery. Heino earned the 1978 gold medal at the Sixth Biennial International de Ceramique in Vallauris, France, for a pot with two birds perched on the rim. He and Vivika showed their work at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the American Craft Museum in New York, now called the Museum of Arts & Design. Otto died on July 16, 2009