Edmund de Waal was born in 1964. He studied English at Cambridge University and ceramics in both England and Japan. He is best known for his large scale installations, which have been exhibited in many museums around the world. Much of Edmund's recent work has been concerned with ideas of collecting and collections; how objects are kept together, lost, stolen or dispersed. His work comes out of a dialogue between minimalism, architecture and music, and is informed by his passion for literature. In May 2014, Phaidon published a substantial monograph of de Waal's work and practice.

Edmund has had major interventions in many museums and public collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, Fitzwilliam Museum, Waddesdon Manor, Tate Britain and the National Museum of Wales. In Autumn 2013, de Waal opened his first major solo show in New York with the Gagosian Gallery and installed a work for the new Asian Pavilion at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. A commission of suspended vitrines, titled Atmosphere, opened in May 2014 for Turner Contemporary in Margate, which will hang in the Sunley Gallery until Februrary 2015. Another public work, Lichtzwang, is on display over the course of Summer 2014 in a neo-classical temple in Vienna's Volksgarten. This marks the beginnings of an on-going relationship with the Kuntshistoriches Museum as de Waal prepares an exhibition for the museum itself to open in 2016. Other future projects include working at the Schindler House in LA in 2015 and with David Chipperfield Architects for a series of new works for London Victoria.

Edmund is also known as an author and has written widely on art and ceramics. His family memoir, THE HARE WITH AMBER EYES (2010), has been translated into nearly 30 languages and has won many literary prizes. 

In 2011 he was awarded an OBE for his services to art.

Books by Edmund de Waal

The White Road: Journey into an Obsession

by Edmund de Waal - History, Memoir, Nonfiction

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 40 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. 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 20th-century history.

The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance

by Edmund de Waal - Nonfiction

THE HARE WITH THE AMBER EYES is the internationally bestselling family memoir by renowned ceramist Edmund de Waal, who traces his family lineage through World War II Europe using his treasured collection of Japanese carved figurines called netsuke.