About the Artist

Edmund de Waal was born in Nottingham, United Kingdom in 1964. He studied English at Cambridge University and ceramics in both England and Japan. He is best known for his large scale installations of porcelain vessels, which have been exhibited in many museums around the world. Much of his recent work has been concerned with ideas of collecting and collections, how objects are kept together, lost, stolen and dispersed. His work comes out of a dialogue between minimalism, architecture and sound, and is informed by his passion for literature.

De Waal’s work has been shown and collected by museums throughout the world, including Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt; National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh; and Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Recent solo museum exhibitions include “Edmund de Waal,” Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge and Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, Cambridge (2007); “Edmund de Waal: Signs & Wonders,” Victoria & Albert Museum, London (2009); and “Edmund de Waal at Waddesdon,” Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom (2012). His acclaimed memoir The Hare with Amber Eyes was the winner of the Costa Biography Award in 2010. In 2015 he published his latest book The White Road: a pilgrimage of sorts, and was also awarded the Donald Windham-Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prize. De Waal currently lives and works in London.