Edmund de Waal: Phaidon produce a beautiful compendium
The many fascinating strands of ceramicist Edmund de Waal's life and work are woven together in a new, beautifully produced monograph, published by Phaidon
Edmund de Waal: Phaidon produce a beautiful compendium
You probably know Edmund de Waal as the author of The Hare with Amber Eyes . His family memoir, which traced the origins of his collection of netsuke (miniature Japanese sculptures, pronounced ‘netsky’), became an international bestseller and has won countless literary awards. De Waal also just happens to be the most significant ceramicist working today. Prose or porcelain, he can work with either. The one informs the other and they both aid his poetic search for answers to the questions that haunt him. In the final analysis, however, he is - in his own words - ‘a potter who writes’, rather than the other way 'round.
Edmund de Waal, Phaidon
Not unusually, de Waal discovered his calling at a pottery evening class. Less conventionally, he was five years old. Forty-five years later, he is still throwing pots and is fascinating on the subject. The forthcoming volume Edmund de Waal , published by Phaidon is an accessible account of his life to date and an exploration of the art of pottery and its meaning. It is a beautiful book, printed on elegant papers with 250 illustrations. Presented in a tooled case, it is a work of art in itself - the next best thing to owning one of de Waal’s priceless pots.
Besides an essay by de Waal, the volume includes contributions from award-winning novelists A.S. Byatt, Peter Carey, and Colm Toíbín, as well as architect Deborah Saunt, photographer Toby Glanville and Guggenheim curator Alexandra Munroe. A specially-commissioned photo-essay which looks behind the scenes of the artist’s studio stands alongside their texts.
De Waal, Proust
The arts journalist Emma Crichton-Miller weaves together de Waal’s artistic and literary lives, revealing the links between the various strands. In a fascinating account of the contemporary artist's formative years, she tells us about his relationship with his formidable grandmother, who critiqued his poems and urged him to read Proust (interestingly, De Waal says he 'lived with Proust' during the decade he was researching and writing The Hare with Amber Eyes). We learn about his passage through Lincoln Cathedral as he went to and from school as a small boy and his subsequent life within the precincts of Canterbury Cathedral, where his father became dean. She quotes de Waal talking about the impact of this architecture in a BBC Radio 3 interview: ‘You could descend into spaces, or get trapped in spaces, and then come out again into completely different volumes. And that sense of how spaces can change atmosphere and spaces can change your emotions, seemed to me something that was very interesting. And I suppose that is something that does connect to pots quite directly.’
Edmund de Waal, Pottery
De Waal's greatest joy was discovering that his school, King's School, had a potter-in-residence. He was taken under the wing of Geoffrey Whiting, a disciple of Bernard Leach, the definitive potter of the 20th Century, about whom de Waal subsequently wrote a book. He spent his teenage afternoons moseying about the Ceramics Galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum, in London, where many years later he was invited to do an installation in the dome.
De Waal still remembers the first pot he made. The evening class teacher tried to persuade him to decorate it with a variety of different paints, but he insisted on glazing it ' in opalescent white with a splash of cobalt blue '. He still owns this first pot, unsurprisingly, perhaps, given his family's penchant for collecting. It is, he says, ' very, very, very heavy, and very, very, very white .' Naturally, his aesthetic has developed over the years, not least as a result of his stay in Japan in the summer after he left school, where he first encountered the netsukes in vitrines; but the exquisite monograph published by Phaidon is a testament to its beginnings.
Edmund de Waal, Turner Contemporary
One of the most interesting modern artists around, he has done very few commercial shows, preferring to work with museums. He calls such work 'interventions' - making modern artworks in response to their existing collections. He has a new commission opening at the end of this month (29 March 2014 - 8 February 2015) at the Turner Contemporary art museum, which overlooks the North Sea in Margate, just down the road from where he grew up. Entitled Atmosphere , it echoes the ways in which artists such as Gerhard Richter, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Turner have thought about clouds and horizons.
'When thinking about the changing landscape of clouds, I remember Constable's beautiful letter about lying on his back and doing "a great deal of skying",' says de Waal. 'There is no more extraordinary place to look at the sky than the Sunley Gallery at Turner Contemporary. Atmosphere is my attempt to make a response to this threshold between a building and the air outside. Suspended in the space are nine vitrine holding 200 small celadon and grey porcelain vessels. I hope they will provoke some skying of their own.'
Want to read more? Members enjoy full access to all Culture Whisper's arts previews, exclusives and features. Click here to take our cultural quiz and get a month's free trial.
Edmund de Waal, Phaidon
Not unusually, de Waal discovered his calling at a pottery evening class. Less conventionally, he was five years old. Forty-five years later, he is still throwing pots and is fascinating on the subject. The forthcoming volume Edmund de Waal , published by Phaidon is an accessible account of his life to date and an exploration of the art of pottery and its meaning. It is a beautiful book, printed on elegant papers with 250 illustrations. Presented in a tooled case, it is a work of art in itself - the next best thing to owning one of de Waal’s priceless pots.
Besides an essay by de Waal, the volume includes contributions from award-winning novelists A.S. Byatt, Peter Carey, and Colm Toíbín, as well as architect Deborah Saunt, photographer Toby Glanville and Guggenheim curator Alexandra Munroe. A specially-commissioned photo-essay which looks behind the scenes of the artist’s studio stands alongside their texts.
De Waal, Proust
The arts journalist Emma Crichton-Miller weaves together de Waal’s artistic and literary lives, revealing the links between the various strands. In a fascinating account of the contemporary artist's formative years, she tells us about his relationship with his formidable grandmother, who critiqued his poems and urged him to read Proust (interestingly, De Waal says he 'lived with Proust' during the decade he was researching and writing The Hare with Amber Eyes). We learn about his passage through Lincoln Cathedral as he went to and from school as a small boy and his subsequent life within the precincts of Canterbury Cathedral, where his father became dean. She quotes de Waal talking about the impact of this architecture in a BBC Radio 3 interview: ‘You could descend into spaces, or get trapped in spaces, and then come out again into completely different volumes. And that sense of how spaces can change atmosphere and spaces can change your emotions, seemed to me something that was very interesting. And I suppose that is something that does connect to pots quite directly.’
Edmund de Waal, Pottery
De Waal's greatest joy was discovering that his school, King's School, had a potter-in-residence. He was taken under the wing of Geoffrey Whiting, a disciple of Bernard Leach, the definitive potter of the 20th Century, about whom de Waal subsequently wrote a book. He spent his teenage afternoons moseying about the Ceramics Galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum, in London, where many years later he was invited to do an installation in the dome.
De Waal still remembers the first pot he made. The evening class teacher tried to persuade him to decorate it with a variety of different paints, but he insisted on glazing it ' in opalescent white with a splash of cobalt blue '. He still owns this first pot, unsurprisingly, perhaps, given his family's penchant for collecting. It is, he says, ' very, very, very heavy, and very, very, very white .' Naturally, his aesthetic has developed over the years, not least as a result of his stay in Japan in the summer after he left school, where he first encountered the netsukes in vitrines; but the exquisite monograph published by Phaidon is a testament to its beginnings.
Edmund de Waal, Turner Contemporary
One of the most interesting modern artists around, he has done very few commercial shows, preferring to work with museums. He calls such work 'interventions' - making modern artworks in response to their existing collections. He has a new commission opening at the end of this month (29 March 2014 - 8 February 2015) at the Turner Contemporary art museum, which overlooks the North Sea in Margate, just down the road from where he grew up. Entitled Atmosphere , it echoes the ways in which artists such as Gerhard Richter, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Turner have thought about clouds and horizons.
'When thinking about the changing landscape of clouds, I remember Constable's beautiful letter about lying on his back and doing "a great deal of skying",' says de Waal. 'There is no more extraordinary place to look at the sky than the Sunley Gallery at Turner Contemporary. Atmosphere is my attempt to make a response to this threshold between a building and the air outside. Suspended in the space are nine vitrine holding 200 small celadon and grey porcelain vessels. I hope they will provoke some skying of their own.'
Want to read more? Members enjoy full access to all Culture Whisper's arts previews, exclusives and features. Click here to take our cultural quiz and get a month's free trial.
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