Magdalene Odundo: ‘Of all mediums, clay is the most versatile, pliable and human’

The Kenyan-born British ceramicist on hand-building pots and whether ‘craft’ is a bad wordFrom the pinch of a nose to the elongated slant of a neck, Magdalene Odundo’s ceramics are on the verge of coming to life. New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art described her objects as seeming “simultaneously familiar and novel”. Born in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1950, she trained in Farnham, Surrey (where she now lives), then at the Royal College of Art. Her approach grew from