Edmund de Waal is an acclaimed British artist and author, celebrated for his powerful installations of handmade porcelain vessels and his deep engagement with themes of memory, diaspora, and the transient nature of objects. His work meticulously explores the mutability and inherent instability of things, using ceramics as vehicles to narrate human emotions and histories. Born in Nottingham, England, de Waal began his ceramics journey as an apprentice to Geoffrey Whiting from 1981 to 1983, a pivotal experience that influenced his approach to combining Eastern and Western ceramic traditions. He graduated with a BA in English Literature from the University of Cambridge in 1986. His academic and artistic pursuits were further enriched by a Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation scholarship in 1991, leading him to earn a postgraduate diploma in Japanese language from the University of Sheffield and to study at the Mejiro Ceramics studio in Tokyo. There, he penned a monograph on Bernard Leach, known as the "father" of British studio pottery. Returning to London in 1993, de Waal transitioned his focus to porcelain, experimenting with the spatial arrangements of teapots, bottles, and jugs. His signature “cargos” of irregular porcelain vessels soon became a hallmark of his installations, varying in scale and composition through the years. A significant milestone in his career was his 2002 architectural intervention, The Porcelain Room, at the Geffrye Museum (now the Museum of the Home) in London, where he displayed 650 vessels within a specially designed space, creating a dialogue between the architecture and his art.
