Magdalene Odundo Art for Sale and Sold Prices

b. 1950 -

Dame Magdalene Anyango Namakhiya Odundo DBE (born 1950) is a Kenyan-born British studio potter, who now lives in Farnham, Surrey. Her work is in the collections of notable museums including the Art Institute of Chicago, The British Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the National Museum of African Art.

She has been Chancellor of the University for the Creative Arts since 2018.

Magdalene Odundo was born in Nairobi, Kenya, and received her early education in both India and Kenya. She attended the Kabete National Polytechnic in Kenya to study Graphics and Commercial Art and later moved to England in 1971 to follow her chosen vocation in Graphic Design. After training in Farnham, Surrey, she completed her qualifications in foundation art and graphics at the Cambridge School of Art, where she began to specialise in ceramics.

After a while in England she discovered pottery, and in 1974–75 she visited Nigeria, visiting the Pottery Training Centre in Abuja, and Kenya to study traditional hand-built pottery techniques. She also travelled to San Ildefonso Pueblo, New Mexico, to observe the making of black-burnished vessels. In 1976, Odundo received a BA degree from West Surrey College of Art & Design (now University for the Creative Arts). She then earned a master's degree at the Royal College of Art in London. She taught at the Commonwealth Institute in London from 1976 to 1979 and at the Royal College of Art in London from 1979 to 1982, before returning to teach at Surrey Institute of Art & Design (now University for the Creative Arts) in 1997, becoming Professor of Ceramics in 2001. In March 2016 she was inaugurated as an Emerita Professor of the University for the Creative Arts, with a celebration event held at the Farnham campus against the backdrop of her important work in glass, Transition II. She lives and works in Surrey.

In 2017 it was announced that Odundo would take up the role of Chancellor of the University for the Creative Arts from June 2018.

Odundo, who in 2008 was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to Art, was made a Dame (DBE) in the Queen's 2020 New Year's Honours. In 2022 is a world famous ceramic artist and Chancellor of the University of the Creative Arts. In 2008 she received the African Art Recognition Award from the Detroit Art Institute and in 2012 the African Heritage 40 Years Anniversary Award. In 2019 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the International Ceramics Festival and in 2020 was appointed DBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours list for Services to the Arts and Arts Education. In 2022 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Arts by Anglia Ruskin University.