Edmund de Waal is a contemporary artist, potter and author. His extraordinary career has managed to successfully intertwine art and books, so that each reflects favourably upon the other. His London ceramics studio produces objects and installations that travel all over the world, while the surrounding shelves heave with books. The Hare with Amber Eyes won both the Costa Book Award and the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize in 2011, The White Road, a book which traces the history of porcelain, was published in 2015 and Letters to Camondo, a further exploration of family history, was published in 2021.
Edmund de Waal
Edmund de Waal
Family photographs
Netsuke
From Edmund de Waal’s Collection
Featured book by Edmund de Waal
The Hare With Amber Eyes
264 wood and ivory carvings, none of them bigger than a matchbox: Edmund de Waal was entranced when he first encountered the collection in his great uncle Iggie’s Tokyo apartment. When he later inherited the ‘netsuke’, they unlocked a story far larger and more dramatic than he could ever have imagined.
From a burgeoning empire in Odessa to fin de siecle Paris, from occupied Vienna to Tokyo, Edmund de Waal traces the netsuke’s journey through generations of his remarkable family against the backdrop of a tumultuous century.
Read more