White Road

Biographies & Memoirs

DE WAAL, EDMUND

Historical

Vintage

Extraordinary new non-fiction, a gripping blend of history and memoir, by the author of the award-winning and bestselling international sensation, The Hare with Amber Eyes. In The White Road, bestselling author and artist Edmund de Waal gives us an intimate narrative history of his lifelong obsession with porcelain, or "white gold." A potter who has been working with porcelain for more than forty years, de Waal describes how he set out on five journeys to places where porcelain was dreamed about, refined, collected and coveted--and that would help him understand the clay's mysterious allure. From his studio in London, he starts by travelling to three "white hills"--sites in China, Germany and England that are key to porcelain's creation. But his search eventually takes him around the globe and reveals more than a history of cups and figurines; rather, he is forced to confront some of the darkest moments of twentieth-century history. Part memoir, part history, part detective story, The White Road chronicles a global obsession with alchemy, art, wealth, craft and purity. In a sweeping yet intimate style that recalls The Hare with Amber Eyes, de Waal gives us a singular understanding of "the spectrum of porcelain" and the mapping of desire.

The White Road: Journey into an Obsession

Knopf Canada

The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance

A New York Times Bestseller
An Economist Book of the Year 
Costa Book Award Winner for Biography 
Galaxy National Book Award Winner (New Writer of the Year Award)
Edmund de Waal is a world-famous ceramicist. Having spent thirty years making beautiful pots―which are then sold, collected, and handed on―he has a particular sense of the secret lives of objects. When he inherited a collection of 264 tiny Japanese wood and ivory carvings, called netsuke, he wanted to know who had touched and held them, and how the collection had managed to survive. 
And so begins this extraordinarily moving memoir and detective story as de Waal discovers both the story of the netsuke and of his family, the Ephrussis, over five generations. A nineteenth-century banking dynasty in Paris and Vienna, the Ephrussis were as rich and respected as the Rothchilds. Yet by the end of the World War II, when the netsuke were hidden from the Nazis in Vienna, this collection of very small carvings was all that remained of their vast empire.

The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance

Parenting & Relationships

Picador

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. An early supporter of the Impressionists, he appears, oddly formal in a top hat, in Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party. Marcel Proust studied Charles closely enough to use him as a model for the aesthete and lover Swann in Remembrance of Things Past. Charles gave the carvings as a wedding gift to his cousin Viktor in Vienna; his children were allowed to play with one netsuke each while they watched their mother, the Baroness Emmy, dress for ball after ball. Her older daughter grew up to disdain fashionable society. Longing to write, she struck up a correspondence with Rilke, who encouraged her in her poetry. The Anschluss changed their world beyond recognition. Ephrussi and his cosmopolitan family were imprisoned or scattered, and Hitler’s theorist on the “Jewish question” appropriated their magnificent palace on the Ringstrasse. A library of priceless books and a collection of Old Master paintings were confiscated by the Nazis. But the netsuke were smuggled away by a loyal maid, Anna, and hidden in her straw mattress. Years after the war, she would find a way to return them to the family she’d served even in their exile. In The Hare with Amber Eyes, Edmund de Waal unfolds the story of a remarkable family and a tumultuous century. Sweeping yet intimate, it is a highly original meditation on art, history, and family, as elegant and precise as the netsuke themselves.

The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

The definitive illustrated edition of the international bestseller Two hundred and sixty-four Japanese wood and ivory carvings, none of them larger 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 far more dramatic story than he could ever have imagined.
From a burgeoning empire in Odessa to fin de siècle Paris, from occupied Vienna to postwar Tokyo, de Waal traces the netsuke's journey through generations of his remarkable family against the backdrop of a tumultuous century. With sumptuous photographs of the netsuke collection and full-color images from de Waal's family archive, the illustrated edition of The Hare with Amber Eyes transforms a deeply intimate saga into a work of visual art.

The Hare with Amber Eyes (Illustrated Edition): A Hidden Inheritance

An intimate narrative history of porcelain, structured around five journeys through landscapes where porcelain was dreamed about, fired, refined, collected, and coveted.
Extraordinary new nonfiction, a gripping blend of history and memoir, by the author of the award-winning and bestselling international sensation, The Hare with the Amber Eyes. In The White Road, bestselling author and artist Edmund de Waal gives us an intimate narrative history of his lifelong obsession with porcelain, or "white gold." A potter who has been working with porcelain for more than forty years, de Waal describes how he set out on five journeys to places where porcelain was dreamed about, refined, collected and coveted-and that would help him understand the clay's mysterious allure. From his studio in London, he starts by travelling to three "white hills"-sites in China, Germany and England that are key to porcelain's creation. But his search eventually takes him around the globe and reveals more than a history of cups and figurines; rather, he is forced to confront some of the darkest moments of twentieth-century history. Part memoir, part history, part detective story, The White Road chronicles a global obsession with alchemy, art, wealth, craft, and purity. In a sweeping yet intimate style that recalls The Hare with the Amber Eyes, de Waal gives us a singular understanding of "the spectrum of porcelain" and the mapping of desire.

Humor & Entertainment

Letters to Camondo

A tragic family history told in a collection of imaginary letters to a famed collector, Moise de Camondo Letters to Camondo is a collection of imaginary letters from Edmund de Waal to Moise de Camondo, the banker and art collector who created a spectacular house in Paris, now the Musée Nissim de Camondo, and filled it with the greatest private collection of French eighteenth-century art. The Camondos were a Jewish family from Constantinople, "the Rothschilds of the East," who made their home in Paris in the 1870s and became philanthropists, art collectors, and fixtures of Belle Époque high society, as well as being targets of antisemitism--much like de Waal's relations, the Ephrussi family, to whom they were connected. Moise de Camondo created a spectacular house and filled it with art for his son, Nissim; after Nissim was killed in the First World War, the house was bequeathed to the French state. Eventually, the Camondos were murdered by the Nazis. After de Waal, one of the world's greatest ceramic artists, was invited to make an exhibition in the Camondo house, he began to write letters to Moise de Camondo. These fifty letters are deeply personal reflections on assimilation, melancholy, family, art, the vicissitudes of history, and the value of memory.

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Potters long ago left behind the notion that pots must be purely useful or merely pleasant everyday objects. At the turn of the twentieth century, ceramics―as in other media in both the decorative and fine arts―underwent revolutionary change. The potter emerged from the anonymity of the workshop and made more individualistic statements in clay than ever before. Ceramics have kept pace with, or even led, new movements in art, from art nouveau, art deco, the Bauhaus, and futurism, through abstract expressionism, pop and performance, to land art and installation art. Stylistic and technical influences are considered here in context, from orientalism and color theory to modernism, postmodernism, and the profuse diversity of approaches that characterizes the end of the century. The scope is wide, taking in developments in Europe, Scandinavia, Russia, the United States, and Japan. The work of exceptional individuals is appraised, including Taxile Doat, Clarice Cliff, Susie Cooper, Bernard Leach, Isamu Noguchi, Hans Coper, Lucie Rie, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Peter Voulkos, and Adrian Saxe. The relation of ceramics to other disciplines is given close attention: sculptors, such as Antony Gormley and Tony Cragg, and even architects, including Frank Gehry, have made ceramics central to their practice. This comprehensive survey provides invaluable background and commentary on leading practitioners, critics, theorists, and pioneers, illuminating the development of an art form that seized and inspired the imagination of artists and the public alike in the twentieth century. 180 illustrations, 80 in color

20th Century Ceramics (World of Art)

Thames&Hudson

The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance. Edmund de Waal

Chatto&Windus

The White Road: a pilgrimage of sorts

The White Road: a pilgrimage of sorts

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by DE WAAL, EDMUND. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by DE WAAL, EDMUND

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by DE WAAL, EDMUND. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

White Road

The White Road: Journey into an Obsession

The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance

The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss

The Hare with Amber Eyes (Illustrated Edition): A Hidden Inheritance

The White Road: Journey into an Obsession

Letters to Camondo

20th Century Ceramics (World of Art)

The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance. Edmund de Waal

The White Road: a pilgrimage of sorts