The Hare With Amber Eyes

The author and central figure of The Hare with Amber Eyes, Edmund de Waal, is an internationally acclaimed potter and ceramicist. His minimalist porcelain installations have been displayed in major museums and collections worldwide. Born in 1964 in Nottingham, England, de Waal trained in the Anglo-Oriental ceramic tradition. In The Hare with Amber Eyes (2010), his breakthrough literary work, de Waal turns this focus to his family’s history, using his inherited collection of Japanese netsuke as a central organizing concept. Since the publication of this memoir, his art has increasingly echoed his literary themes. His own ceramics explore the relationship between form, memory, and history, and are often displayed in vitrines, emphasizing the symbolism of vitrines. In acknowledgement of his services to the arts, de Waal was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2011 and Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2021.

The Hare with Amber Eyes unfolds through de Waal’s investigation into the fate of his ancestors, the Ephrussi family. The book is both a biographical history and a memoir, charting the author’s engagement with his partly Jewish identity and cultural inheritance.