The Hare With Amber Eyes

Edmund de Waal’s The Hare with Amber Eyes (2010) is a family memoir that traces the fate of a collection of Japanese netsuke across generations of the Ephrussi family. Blending personal narrative with cultural history, the author reconstructs the rise and fall of his Jewish ancestors against the backdrop of Western Europe’s turbulent modern history. The book is a meditation on the Jewish diaspora and the fragility of cultural assimilation, exploring how objects, particularly works of art, can become vessels of memory and continuity. De Waal is a British ceramicist and potter. The Hare with Amber Eyes was awarded the Costa Book Award for Biography and the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and has sold more than a million copies.

This study guide refers to the Chatto & Windus 2010 e-book edition of The Hare with Amber Eyes.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of racism, religious discrimination, death, and death by suicide.

Summary

The Hare with Amber Eyes opens in the early 1990s, when de Waal, a British potter and ceramic artist, is studying Japanese pottery in Tokyo. Once a week, he visits his great-uncle Iggie von Ephrussi, who has lived in Japan for decades with his partner, Jiro. Iggie owns a showcase displaying 264 netsuke (small, intricately carved Japanese figures made of wood or ivory). These carvings, including the titular hare with amber eyes, fascinate de Waal. When Iggie dies in 1994, de Waal inherits the collection.

De Waal knows little about the netsuke beyond a few family anecdotes. They were purchased in Paris in the 1870s by Charles Ephrussi and later gifted to Charles’s cousin Viktor in Vienna. Determined to trace their history (and by extension, the story of his family), de Waal sets out on a research trip that takes him to Paris, Vienna, Japan, and Odessa.

The Ephrussis were a Jewish banking dynasty originating from Odessa, part of the Russian Empire. In the 1850s, Charles Joachim Ephrussi built a vast trading empire exporting Ukrainian wheat across Europe. His descendants became some of the wealthiest financiers on the continent, rivaling the Rothschilds.

In the 1870s, Charles Ephrussi and his brothers, Jules and Ignace, lived in the family’s newly built Parisian mansion, Hôtel Ephrussi. Jules was head of the Ephrussi & Co. Bank in Paris, while Charles was drawn to art and scholarship. He became a collector of Renaissance and Impressionist art at the height of la belle époque (or “the beautiful age,” a time of great artistic and cultural development in late 19th and early 20th-century France) and edited the Gazette des Beaux-Arts. Charles frequented fashionable Parisian salons and was both a friend and patron to several artists, including Édouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, and Edgar Degas. Renoir depicted Charles in his painting Le Déjeuner des canotiers (Luncheon of the Boating Party). In addition, the novelist Marcel Proust partly modeled the character Charles Swann (whom Proust featured in his 1913 novel Swann’s Way: In Search of Lost Time, Volume One) on Charles Ephrussi.

Charles conducted a long-standing affair with a married countess, Louise Cahen d’Anvers, who shared his interest in art. When Japanese objets d’art were fashionable in France, they both became collectors. Charles bought the collection of netsuke from a Paris dealer and displayed them in a vitrine (or glass display case) in his study alongside Impressionist paintings. When he hosted social gatherings, he would unlock the vitrine and allow his guests to pass around the netsuke.

While Charles was wealthy and had authority in the art world, he was also the target of anti-Jewish sentiment. The Dreyfus Affair of the 1890s exposed the antisemitic undercurrents of French society, and many of Charles’s artistic friends turned against him. By the end of the century, Charles had ceased collecting and was increasingly marginalized by the society that once embraced him. In 1899, when his cousin Viktor married Baroness Emmy Schey von Koromla in Vienna, Charles sent the netsuke collection and the vitrine as a wedding gift.

Viktor von Ephrussi was the head of the Ephrussi & Co. Bank in Vienna. He and his young wife, Emmy, lived in the Palais Ephrussi, a grand residence on Vienna’s Ringstrasse. Emmy was beautiful, had a passion for clothes, and took several lovers during her marriage. Her dressing room became the new home for the netsuke. There, her children, Elisabeth, Gisela, and Ignace (Iggie), took the carvings out of the vitrine and played with them as she dressed. At the turn of the century, Vienna had a large Jewish population, and the Ringstrasse was lined with palaces belonging to wealthy Jewish families. At the same time, the cultural capital of the Austro-Hungarian empire was increasingly hostile to Jews. Politicians such as the mayor of Vienna, Karl Lueger, gained popularity by vilifying Jewish financiers. The Ephrussis, like many assimilated Jewish families, tried to downplay their origins. The only trace of their heritage in the Palais was the ballroom ceiling, which featured painted scenes from the Book of Esther, celebrating Jewish survival.

Upon the outbreak of World War I, Viktor was keen to demonstrate his patriotism and invested heavily in Austrian war bonds. This investment proved disastrous when the Austro-Hungarian Empire was dissolved at the end of the war. Emmy gave birth to another son, Rudolf, just as her eldest daughter, Elisabeth, gained a place at the University of Vienna. Eventually earning a doctorate in law, Elisabeth also wrote poetry and corresponded with the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Leaving Vienna for Paris, she married a Dutchman, Hendrik de Waal, and had two sons, one of whom was Edmund de Waal’s father. Elisabeth’s younger siblings likewise left Vienna. Gisela married a banker in Madrid, and Iggie studied finance in Germany before pursuing a career in fashion in Paris and New York.

During the 1930s, Nazi Germany became an increasingly powerful force. In 1938, the Anschluss brought Austria under Nazi rule. The Palais Ephrussi was stormed by antisemitic intruders who looted its contents, destroying furniture and taking valuables. Soon after, Gestapo officers arrested Viktor and forced him to sign over all his assets, including the Palais and the bank. Victor, Emmy, and Rudolf were confined to two rooms of the Palais, while the rest of the building became offices for Nazi officials. Rudolf emigrated to the US after securing a work visa. Viktor and Emmy fled to Czechoslovakia, taking refuge at their country estate, Kövesces. Emmy died soon afterward from an overdose of her heart medication. Victor eventually escaped to England, where he lived with Elisabeth and her family until he died in 1945. Elisabeth discovered that many of their relatives died in Nazi concentration camps during the war.

In 1945, Elisabeth returned to Vienna to reclaim what little of her family’s property remained. The Palais was in ruins and occupied by US forces. Elisabeth learned that Anna, the family’s maid, had risked her life to save the netsuke. As the Nazis packed the contents of the Palais, Anna took the small Japanese carvings out of the vitrine and concealed them in her mattress. Anna returned all 264 netsuke to Elisabeth, who took them back to England.

Iggie, Elisabeth’s brother, had served as a US intelligence officer in World War II. After the war, he accepted a post with an international grain company in Japan. Settling in Tokyo in 1947, he took the netsuke back to their country of origin. Iggie became a successful businessman in Japan and met his life partner, Jiro Sugiyama. His home featured paintings retrieved from the Palais Ephrussi alongside a collection of Japanese art. Iggie displayed the netsuke in a vitrine of his own design and encouraged guests to admire and handle them. His Japanese friends explained the cultural meaning of many of the carvings. In later years, Iggie catalogued the netsuke, tracing the craftsmanship of individual carvers such as Tomokazu, known for his detailed animal figures.

When Edmund de Waal travels to Odessa, he visits the Ephrussi family’s original home. The once-grand building is crumbling and is being transformed into modern offices. The only surviving reminder of the Ephrussi dynasty is their crest on a second-floor balcony. Standing on the terrace overlooking the Black Sea, de Waal feels the presence of his ancestors. Inside a synagogue in Odessa, the author notices a yellow Seder chair reserved for Elijah the Prophet and recalls how Charles Ephrussi had a yellow armchair in his Paris study. He realizes that Charles’s chair was a subtle reference to the Ephrussi family’s Jewish heritage, hidden in plain sight.

Reflecting on his years of research, de Waal acknowledges that he will never know everything about the origins of the netsuke or his family’s history. His grandmother Elisabeth preserved many letters, but for personal reasons destroyed those relating to her mother, Emmy. The author concludes that Elisabeth’s choice to forget was valid and understandable. However, in a world where so much Jewish history has been erased, he feels a duty to remember. De Waal displays the netsuke in a vitrine in his London home. He leaves the vitrine unlocked, encouraging his children to handle the Japanese carvings just as their ancestors once did.