Rodriguez, Abraham

Abraham Rodriguez Mora is a third-generation potter from the village of Mata Ortiz in northern Mexico. Born in 1989, his parents are Armando Rodriguez and Olivia Mora. His father started teaching Abraham how to make pottery when he was just four years old and he even appears in one of the videos of Mata Ortiz from the early 1990s. Armando had learned from his brother, Manuel (Manolo) Rodriguez, who had learned from Juan Quezada Sr.

Abraham learned how to do sgraffito design from his uncle, Leonel Lopez Sr. At first he did his etching using dental tools but soon switched to using sharpened bicycle spokes. He does the entire pottery-making process on his own, from collecting the clay to processing it to forming the pots to decorating and firing them. His designs nearly always incorporate animals and nature scenes and his most recent pots incorporate optical effects into the designs. In 2017 he earned a Second Place ribbon for one of his sgraffito designs at the annual Concurso Ceramica de Mata Ortiz.