Edmund de Waal

Edmund de Waal was born in 1964 in a traditional Christian household; his father was Dean at Canterbury Cathedral, his mother a well-respected devotional writer and retreat leader. A potter since childhood and an acclaimed writer, de Waal has a long-held obsession with porcelain. Best known for his large-scale installations of porcelain vessels, which have been exhibited in many museums around the world, much of his work is around the contingency of memory: bringing particular histories of loss and exile into renewed life. Both his artistic and written practice have broken new ground through their critical engagement with the history and potential of ceramics, as well as with architecture, music, dance and poetry. De Waal continually investigates themes of diaspora, memorial, and materiality with his interventions and artworks made for diverse spaces and museums worldwide. Recent sites include the Venetian Ghetto and Ateneo Veneto for his two-part project, psalm, coinciding with the Venice Biennale 2019. The latter holds de Waal’s most ambitious work to date, the library of exile: a pavilion of 2,000 books written by those forced to leave their own country or exiled within it. The library of exile has toured to the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen in Dresden and the British Museum in 2020. De Waal is also renowned for his bestselling memoir, The Hare with Amber Eyes (2010), which won many literary prizes including the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the Costa Biography Award and has been translated into over 30 languages. Other titles include The White Road (2016), The Pot Book (2011), 20th Century Ceramics (2003) and de Waal’s critical study on Bernard Leach for Tate (1997). De Waal was made an OBE (Order of the British Empire) for his services to art in 2011.