Edmund de Waal CBE is a world-renowned potter and writer. Known for his poetic arrangements of porcelain vessels within minimalist vitrines, the artist returns to the subjects of history, memory, and diaspora throughout his work. Drawn to the deeply tactile nature of his medium, de Waal considers the capacity for objects to tell stories, to accumulate the traces and residues of provenance like patina. Rhythmic and deeply lyrical, his compositions of ethereal fragments—porcelain, gold, silver, alabaster, steel and lead—are meditations on literature, music, poetry, and place.
De Waal was born in 1964 in Nottingham. He has exhibited works in museums and galleries worldwide, such as the British Museum, London; The Jewish Museum, New York; and Royal Academy of Arts, London. In 2019 he became the first contemporary artist invited to display his works at the Frick Collection, New York, and his iconic installation Signs & Wonders is a permanent fixture at the V&A Museum, London.
His memoir The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance became an international bestseller after its publication in 2010, winning the Costa Book Award for Biography, and the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Price. In 2021, the artist was awarded CBE for his contribution to ceramics and the arts.
