Edmund de Waal

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Edmund de Waal
Windham-Campbell Literature Prize

Edmund Arthur Lowndes de Waal,

Windham–Campbell Literature Prize for Non-Fiction in 2015.[3][4] De Waal's second book The White Road, tracing his journey to discover the history of porcelain was released in 2015.[5]

He lives and works in London.[6]

Early life

De Waal was born in

Dean of Canterbury Cathedral. His grandfather was Hendrik de Waal, a Dutch businessman who moved to England. His paternal grandmother Elisabeth and great grandfather Viktor von Ephrussi were members of the Ephrussi family, a history of which was chronicled in The Hare with Amber Eyes.[2] Elisabeth de Waal's first novel, The Exiles Return, was published by Persephone Books in 2013. De Waal's siblings include barrister John de Waal (husband of author Kit de Waal),[8] Alex de Waal who is director of the World Peace Foundation, and Caucasus expert Thomas de Waal
.

Education and early ceramic work

De Waal's interest in ceramics began aged five when he took an evening class at the Lincoln School of Art,[9] this early introduction to pottery influenced de Waal's later enthusiasm for pursuing an art practice based in ceramics.[10][11][12]

De Waal was educated at The King's School, Canterbury, where he was taught pottery by the potter Geoffrey Whiting (1919-1988), a student of Bernard Leach.[13] At 17, de Waal began a two-year apprenticeship with Whiting, deferring his entry into University of Cambridge.[11][14] During the apprenticeship de Waal made hundreds of earthenware and stoneware pots, such as casseroles and honey pots.[11] In 1983, de Waal took up his place at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, to read English. He was awarded a scholarship in 1983 and graduated with first class honours in 1986.[15]

Following graduation, de Waal began to follow the discipline of British studio pottery, to create inexpensive domestic pots with good earth-tone colours.[11] He moved to Herefordshire where he built a kiln and set up a pottery making functional stoneware pots in the Leach tradition, but the enterprise was not financially successful.[11][5] In 1988, de Waal moved to inner-city Sheffield and began experimenting with working in porcelain.[14][2][5]

In 1990 de Waal obtained a

Sheffield University[15] and continued an additional year's study.[2] Whilst studying in Japan at the Mejiro Ceramics studio de Waal also worked on a monograph of Bernard Leach, researching his papers and journals in the archive room of the Japanese Folk Crafts Museum.[16]
During this time de Waal began to make series of porcelain jars with pushed-in, gestural sides, arranged in groups and sequences.

Art and ceramics

Teapot, 1997 – an early work in porcelain by de Waal

On returning to Britain in 1993, de Waal settled in London[14] and began making his distinctive ceramics, porcelain with a celadon glaze. Focusing on essentially classical vessel shapes but with the inclusion of indentations or pinches and subtle variations in tone and texture in the style de Waal began while in Japan, these pots slowly gained the attention of the British craft industry leading to his first exhibition at Egg London in 1995.[17]

black milk, 2015, in situ at Edmund de Waal's London Studio

Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s de Waal's ceramic practice became heavily influenced by modernism, the Bauhaus movement in particular. This led to de Waal's belief that the East and West may meet in the materiality of porcelain; for example, the ethos of China's Song dynasty may encounter the modernist ethos of the Bauhaus.[18]

In the years since 2000 de Waal has moved away from making and exhibiting single domestic use vessels to the production of groups of vessels and objects to be viewed in relation to openings and spaces, later moving into predominately wall-mounted and freestanding vitrines filled with varying multitudes of his porcelain vessels, and most recently the addition of different kinds of metals, metallic gilding, porcelain shards and sheets of porcelain with embossed handwriting.[19] In a 2017 interview conducted in preparation for de Waal's exhibition at Artipelag, Sweden, de Waal explained his artistic process and attraction to porcelain as a material:

when I need to make something I'm often mesmerised or haunted by an idea or by a piece of poetry. A line from poetry, a word sometimes, or a piece of music, or a space that I've been thinking about, a particular place that I want to kind of question by making something for it. So, there are all these different possibilities when I begin. I am grounded in history, the history and culture of the materials I use, this extraordinary two-thousand-year history of porcelain. I don't use this material lightly. It’s not a light material. It's got incredible resonance, incredible power.[20]

Lichtzwang, 2014. Installed in the Theseus Temple, Vienna.
Lichtzwang, 2014. Installed in the Theseus Temple, Vienna.

In 2013 BBC One broadcast an Imagine documentary following de Waal for a year as he prepared for his debut New York exhibition, Atemwende at Gagosian Gallery; titled and inspired by a poetry collection from the German émigré poet Paul Celan.[21][22]

De Waal discussed the influence of music and sound on his art practice in various interviews, including the BBC Radio 3 programme Private Passions,[23] BBC Desert Island Discs[24] and in a 2017 interview, de Waal mentioned, "I am obviously on some spectrum where for me objects do actually have very powerful sound. I do literally hear them when I put them out."[20] In addition, de Waal plays recorded music aloud in his studio while making and assembling his work, that this provides "a landscape for [him] to be in" when working.[25][20] De Waal has collaborated with musicians on various projects, including Psalm, in 2015 by the Scottish composer Martin Suckling with the Aurora Orchestra; and an atmospheric sound piece by Simon Fisher Turner as a part of the 2017 Schindler House exhibition.[26][27]

on the properties of fire, 2012. Installed at Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire.
on the properties of fire, 2012. Installed at Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire.

De Waal has exhibited major installations at Chatsworth, Kettle's Yard, Tate Britain, Fitzwilliam Museum, Southwark Cathedral, Kunsthistorisches Museum (including a commission for the Theseus Temple in the Volksgarten, Vienna), and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

In 2012 he received his first outdoor public art commission, for the Alison Richard Building at the

National Gallery in Prague and Kunsthaus Graz exploring the history of clay. The exhibition featured works by both artists and from other prominent artists working in ceramics, including Pablo Picasso, Lucio Fontana, Isamu Noguchi, Lucie Rie and Peter Voulkos.[30]

Since 2016 de Waal has continued his interest in working with arts and cultural institutions in installing his work in relationship and dialogue with existing museum collections such as the Frick Collection, historical architectural spaces such as Schindler House and the Ateneo Veneto; and engagement with Jewish museums in both Venice and Vienna.[31][32] De Waal make his Royal Ballet debut in the 2017–18 Season designing Wayne McGregor’s new ballet, Yugen, at the Royal Opera House. Set to The Chichester Psalms, the production formed part of a programme celebrating the centenary of Leonard Bernstein's birth.[33][34][35]

De Waal is a patron of

V&A Museum of Childhood.[41][42]

Writing

The Hare with Amber Eyes. Netsuke. Masatoshi, Osaka, ca. 1880, signed. Ivory, amber buffalo horn. Former Ephrussi Collection, today descendant Edmund de Waal. Shown at a special exhibition in November 2016 with Edmund de Waal at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
The Hare with Amber Eyes. Netsuke. Masatoshi, Osaka, ca. 1880, signed. Ivory, amber buffalo horn. Former Ephrussi Collection, today descendant Edmund de Waal. Shown at a special exhibition in November 2016 with Edmund de Waal at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

In 1998 De Waal published a monograph on Bernard Leach with research collected while studying in Japan.[43] The book challenges the public understanding of Leach's as the great and original interlocutor for Japan and the East as the 20th century potter who translated the mystery of the East to audiences in the West. De Waal's research into Leach in Japan revealed that he predominantly associated himself with Western educated Japanese people, did not speak Japanese and studied only a narrow range of traditional Japanese ceramics. Due to Leach's status in the West as the "Father of British studio ceramics" and the influence of his Eastern techniques and philosophy, De Waal's views attracted criticism from some of Leach's followers.[44]

In 2010 de Waal's family memoir,

Costa Book Award for biography in 2010, as well as the Galaxy New Writer of the Year Book Award[46] and the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize.[45] It has sold over a million copies and has been published in more than 25 languages.[47]

The Ephrussis. Travel in Time, an exhibition surrounding the story of the Ephrussi family told by de Waal in his family memoir The Hare with Amber Eyes, tracing their history from Odessa to Paris and Vienna; then to their migration as refugees as the Second World War forced them to seek asylum in the United Kingdom, the US and Mexico, and onto Japan and other countries, opened at the Jewish Museum Vienna in November 2019.[48][49]

De Waal's second book, The White Road, was published by

forced labor provided by the Dachau concentration camp.[5]

De Waal's third book, Letters to Camondo, was published by Chatto & Windus in May 2021.

Major exhibitions and installations

Awards and honours

De Waal was appointed

Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2021 Birthday Honours,[104]
both for services to the arts.

Bibliography

Books

Catalogues

Television appearances

References

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  8. ^ "'My Name is Leon' by Kit de Waal: Tears, snot, laughter and race riots". The Irish Times.
  9. ^ "BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Edmund de Waal; Winner of Young Musician; Hypnotic Brass Ensemble". BBC. Retrieved 18 September 2019.
  10. ^ "Why craft is central - Crafts Council". craftscouncil.org.uk. Retrieved 11 September 2019.
  11. ^ a b c d e "Transcript of the John Tusa interview with Edmund de Waal". BBC Radio 3. bbc.co.uk. 25 July 2005. Archived from the original on 6 January 2009. Retrieved 4 August 2017. Link for recording (available only in UK?).
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  13. ^ Ceramics: Art and Perception, No. 54, 2003.
  14. ^ a b c Paul Laity (12 February 2011). "Edmund de Waal: A life in arts". The Guardian. Retrieved 20 September 2014.
  15. ^ a b "Curriculum Vitae for THINK TANK". Archived from the original on 31 March 2012. Retrieved 20 September 2014.
  16. ^ de Waal, The Hare with Amber Eyes (2011), p. 3.
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  18. ^ Twentieth Century Ceramics, London, Thames and Hudson, 2003.
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External links

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