About this item
The Ephrussis were a grand banking family, as rich and respected as the Rothschilds, who “burned like a comet” in nineteenth-century Paris and Vienna society. Yet by the end of World War II, almost the only thing remaining of their vast empire was a collection of 264 wood and ivory carvings, none of them larger than a matchbox.The renowned ceramicist Edmund de Waal became the fifth generation to inherit this small and exquisite collection of netsuke. Entranced by their beauty and mystery, he determined to trace the story of his family through the story of the collection.The netsuke—drunken monks, almost-ripe plums, snarling tigers—were gathered by Charles Ephrussi at the height of the Parisian rage for all things Japanese. Charles had shunned the place set aside for him in the family business to make a study of art, and of beautiful living.
About the Author
Edmund de Waal is an artist who writes. Much of his work is about the contingency of memory: bringing particular histories of loss and exile into renewed life. His bestselling memoir, 'The Hare with Amber Eyes', won the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the Costa Biography Award and in 2015 he was awarded the Windham-Campbell prize for non-fiction by Yale University. 'The White Road', a journey into the history of porcelain, was published in 2015. His latest book, 'Letters to Camondo', was published in April 2021; a haunting sequence of imagined letters to the Count de Camondo - the owner of a Parisian palace filled with beautiful objects, turned into a memorial for his lost son. De Waal lives and works in London. www.edmunddewaal.com
