The hare with amber eyes : a family's century of art and loss

Amazon.com Review Amazon Best of the Month, September 2010 : At the heart of Edmund de Waal's strange and graceful family memoir, The Hare with Amber Eyes , is a one-of-a-kind inherited collection of ornamental Japanese carvings known as netsuke. The netsuke are tiny and tactile--they sit in the palm of your hand--and de Waal is drawn to them as "small, tough explosions of exactitude." He's also drawn to the story behind them, and for years he put aside his own work as a world-renowned potter and curator to uncover the rich and tragic family history of which the carvings are one of the few concrete legacies. De Waal's family was the Ephrussis, wealthy Jewish grain traders who branched out from Russia across the capitals of Europe before seeing their empire destroyed by the Nazis. Beginning with his art connoisseur ancestor Charles (a model for Proust's Swann), who acquired the netsuke during the European rage for Japonisme, de Waal traces the collection from Japan to Europe--where they were saved from the brutal bureaucracy of the Nazi Anschluss in the pockets of a family servant--and back to Japan and Europe again. Throughout, he writes with a tough, funny, and elegant attention to detail and personality that does full justice to the exactitude of the little carvings that first roused his curiosity. --Tom Nissley From Publishers Weekly In this family history, de Waal, a potter and curator of ceramics at the Victoria & Albert Museum, describes the experiences of his family, the Ephrussis, during the turmoil of the 20th century. Grain merchants in Odessa, various family members migrated to Vienna and Paris, becoming successful bankers. Secular Jews, they sought assimilation in a period of virulent anti-Semitism. In Paris, Charles Ephrussi purchased a large collection of Japanese netsuke, tiny hand-carved figures including a hare with amber eyes. The collection passed to Viktor Ephrussi in Vienna and became the family's greatest legacy. Loyal citizens of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Vienna Ephrussis were devastated by the outcome of WWI and were later driven from their home by the imposition of Nazi rule over Austria. After WWII, they discovered that their maid, Anna, had preserved the netsuke collection, which Ignace Ephrussi inherited, and he settled in postwar Japan. Today, the netsuke reside with de Waal (descended from the family's Vienna branch) and serve as the embodiment of his family history. A somewhat rambling narrative with special appeal to art historians, this account is nonetheless rich in drama and valuable anecdote. 20 b&w illus. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. History,General,Biography & Autobiography,Historical,Europe,Jewish Bankers,De Waal; Edmund - Travel - Europe,Art,Biography,Artists; Architects; Photographers,Netsukes,Sculpture & Installation,Asian,Jewish Bankers - Europe,Jewish Businesspeople - Europe,Modern (Late 19th Century to 1945),Art - Collectors and Collecting - Europe,Ceramics,Ephrussi Family,Private Collections,Collectors and Collecting The Ephrussis were a grand banking family, as rich and respected as the Rothschilds, who burned like a comet in nineteenth-century Paris and Vienna society. Yet by the end of World War II, almost the only thing remaining of their vast empire was a collection of 264 wood and ivory carvings, none of them larger than a matchbox. The renowned ceramicist Edmund de Waal became the fifth generation to inherit this small and exquisite collection of netsuke. Entranced by their beauty and mystery, he determined to trace the story of his family through the story of the collection. The netsukedrunken monks, almost-ripe plums, snarling tigerswere gathered by Charles Ephrussi at the height of the Parisian rage for all things Japanese. Charles had shunned the place set aside for him in the family business to make a study of art, and of beautiful living. An early supporter of the Impressionists, he appears, oddly formal in a top hat, in Renoirs Luncheon of the Boating Party . Marcel Proust studied Charles closely enough to use him as a model for the aesthete and lover Swann in Remembrance of Things Past . Charles gave the carvings as a wedding gift to his cousin Viktor in Vienna; his children were allowed to play with one netsuke each while they watched their mother, the Baroness Emmy, dress for ball after ball. Her older daughter grew up to disdain fashionable society. Longing to write, she struck up a correspondence with Rilke, who encouraged her in her poetry. The Anschluss changed their world beyond recognition. Ephrussi and his cosmopolitan family were imprisoned or scattered, and Hitlers theorist on the Jewish question appropriated their magnificent palace on the Ringstrasse. A library of priceless books and a collection of Old Master paintings were confiscated by the Nazis. But the netsuke were smuggled away by a loyal maid, Anna, and hidden in her straw mattress. Years after the war, she would find a way to return them to the family shed served even in their exile. In The Hare with Amber Eyes , Edmund de Waal unfolds the story of a remarkable family and a tumultuous century. Sweeping yet intimate, it is a highly original meditation on art, history, and family, as elegant and precise as the netsuke themselves. 264 wood and ivory netsuke, none of them larger than a matchbox: in a stunningly original memoir Edmund de Waal describes the journey taken by this exquisite collection - and the family who treasured it - across continents, and centuries, in a gripping tale of war and peace, passion and loss. Apprentice potter Edmund de Waal was entranced by the collection when he first encountered it in the Tokyo apartment of his Great Uncle Iggie. And later, when Edmund inherited the 'netsuke', they unlocked a story far larger than he could ever have imagined Traces The Parallel Stories Of Nineteenth-century Art Patron Charles Ephrussi And His Unique Collection Of 360 Miniature Netsuke Japanese Ivory Carvings, Documenting Ephrussi's Relationship With Marcel Proust And The Impact Of The Holocaust On His Cosmopolitan Family. Edmund De Waal. Paris 1871-1899 Vienna 1899-1938 Vienna Ko vecses, Tunbridge Wells, Vienna 1938-1947 Tokyo 1947-2001 Tokyo, Odessa, London 2001-2009.