Mo Abbaro

Mo Abbaro (17 October 1933 – 12 March 2016),[1][2] also known professionally as Mo Abdalla,[3] was a London-based Sudanese ceramicist and potter, who has been described by artist Oliver Bloom as "one of the world's finest ceramicists".[4]

Life and career

Mohammed Ahmed Abdalla Abbaro was born in Abu Jibayha, Sudan.[1] He graduated in fine and applied arts from Khartoum Technical Institute in 1958,[1] the following year winning a scholarship to London to study ceramics at the Central School of Arts and Crafts.[1] He did postgraduate studies in industrial pottery design at the North Staffordshire College of Ceramics, after which he had a period of training in chemical analyses of ceramics materials at the North Staffs College of Ceramics Technology.[5][6] He went back to Sudan to teach ceramics for some years, but decided to return to England in 1966[2] to pursue his career in Britain.[6]

He taught ceramics at the Camden Arts Centre for more than two decades,[2] and had many exhibitions in London — including at the Barbican, the Whitechapel Gallery, the Mall Galleries, and the Iraqi Cultural Centre[1] — and elsewhere in the UK, as well as in the US and Sweden.[6] His studio and showroom were in King Henry’s Road, close to Primrose Hill.[6]

He turned to writing in later life, publishing works on ceramic technique, such as Modern Ceramics — On the Interplay of Forms and Surfaces (2000), as well as on his own family history,[1] including The History of the Abbaros of Sudan since the 15th Century (1997).[2]

His ceramics are in the collections of the British Museum, Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, and the Smithsonian Museum, Washington.[7]

Family

He had been married since 1964 to Rose,[2] daughter of composer Elisabeth Lutyens and granddaughter of Sir Edwin Lutyens.[1]

Abbaro died aged 80 in March 2016, survived by his wife and their son and two daughters.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Mo Abbaro, ceramicist – obituary", The Telegraph, 19 May 2016.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Halida and Besheer, "Mohammed Ahmed Abdalla Abbaro 1933-2016", CPA News: The Craft Potters Association, Number 167, pp. 8–9.
  3. ↑ Natalie Bennett, "Sudan's ancient treasures reveal the mighty culture that humbled the pharoahs", The Independent, 29 August 2004.
  4. ↑ Oliver Bloom, "The ceramicist", YouTube.
  5. ↑ "Sudan, Democratic Republic of the — IV. Painting, graphic arts and sculpture", Oxford Islamic Studies Online.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Mo A Abbaro website.
  7. ↑ "Mohammed Ahmed Abdalla", Smithsonian National Institute of African Art.

External links

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