Heino died Thursday of acute renal failure at Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura, said Dr. George Gemmingen, a friend. In collaboration with his wife and in the 14 years since her death, the Finnish-American 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 claimed to have 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, 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 up until his death, 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,' Heino told the Los Angeles Times in a 2008 interview. Although he indulged a passion for cars, purchasing a Rolls-Royce and a Bentley, Heino was also philanthropic, donating his work and funds to ceramic institutions, and the Ventura County Museum of History and Art, which staged exhibitions of his work in 1995 and 2005. He was even more generous with his time, teaching, demonstrating and mentoring generations of potters. (Begin optional trim) Christy Johnson, director of the American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pomona, said, 'Otto and his wife represented a time when the artist's character was considered to be part of the beauty of their pieces. Their devotion to the work, to each other and to teaching contributed to the fine quality of the work.' Potter Don Pilcher, who studied with the Heinos, said the childless couple were devoted to their craft and passing along their knowledge as a legacy. 'They treated me, and others, like a son,' he wrote in an e-mail. 'Watching Otto fire a kiln was a master class in care, precision and patience, I never saw anybody more reluctant to turn off a kiln. It was as if he were having an affair with the fire.' (End optional trim) Heino was born April 20, 1915, 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, Heino had established a successful trucking business. For five years, he served in the Air Force as a fighter plane 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.' ' After the war, Heino attended the League of New Hampshire Arts and Crafts on the G.I. Bill. He married his pottery instructor, Vivika Timeriasieff, in 1950. Two years later, they moved to Los Angeles when she succeeded glazing master Glen Lukens in a teaching post at the University of Southern California. Heino's mechanical skills and education in ceramics won him a job with NASA working on rockets and space capsules. After a stint on the East Coast in the 1960s, 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 in Washington, D.C., the American Craft Museum in New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Even after having a pacemaker installed in 2008, he remained indefatigable, telling the Times, 'Never hurry, never worry. If you're negative, you'll never make it.' He is survived by his youngest sister, Olga Rogowski. 