Ibrohim Komilov

Ibrohim Komilov was born in 1928 in Rishton, in the Fergana Valley, into a family of hereditary potters. He belonged to the seventh generation of the Rishton pottery dynasty and was a grandson of Abdulla Kulol, a renowned master of the valley.

He learned the craft from his father, Usto Komil, and his uncles Usto Dodo and Usto Madamin (Mulla Madamin Okhun), and also from the Rishton master Usto Mirsodiq, a pupil of the nineteenth-century potter Baba Khoja Mirsalimov. He studied at the Baranov ceramics artel in Tashkent and went on a creative trip to Riga.

For about sixty years he worked at the Rishton ceramics factory, where from 1970 he was an artist. He was counted among the best masters of chinnipaz and safedpaz wares and was fully at home in forming, painting and the different glaze techniques. Komilov restored the recipe of the alkaline (ishkor) glaze and brought it back into production.

The large dishes, bowls and vases he made are known for their blue palette, stylised patterns and symbolic animal forms. His works are held by the State Museum of Arts of Uzbekistan, the Fergana regional museum, the Museum of Oriental Art in Moscow, the Museum of Ethnography in St Petersburg, the Hermitage and foreign collections. He exhibited in Uzbekistan and abroad from 1950.

In 1973 he was named People's Painter of the Uzbek SSR, in 1983 he became a laureate of the USSR State Prize, and in 1998 he received the title People's Master of Uzbekistan. He was a member of the Hunarmand Association of Folk Craftsmen of Uzbekistan from 1997 and in 2002 was awarded the Gold Medal of the Academy of Arts of Uzbekistan.

Ibrohim Komilov died in Rishton in 2002. His children — his daughter Khalima Ergasheva and his sons Ismoiljon, Isroil, Muzaffar and Sharofiddin — are also master potters, and younger Rishton masters name him among their teachers.