LONDON.- On 21 November 2018, 79 netsuke from the collection of Edmund de Waal were sold at auction at Matthew Barton Ltd., London for £98,961*, with proceeds going to the charity Refugee Council.

Passed down through five generations of Edmund de Waal’s family, the collection was the inspiration for his best-selling family memoir The Hare with Amber Eyes.

From November 2018, the main collection will go on long-term loan to the Jewish Museum in Vienna, joining his family archive donated to the museum earlier this year. In November 2019, there will be an exhibition at the museum about the family and its collections which will subsequently tour internationally. A condition of the loan is that the public will be able to handle the small sculptures.

Edmund de Waal said: “The decision to place the netsuke on loan allows them to tell the story of migration, identity and exile to a new audience. In The Hare with Amber Eyes, I wrote of how objects can evoke histories through touch, and a stipulation of the loan is that a group will be available for handling by the many visitors to the Museum.

No collection stays the same. As part of this new chapter we have decided to let part of the collection be offered for sale to aid refugee charities, a cause that remains central to our lives. Our hope is that these netsuke will find people who will want to pick them up, enjoy their beauty and remember the extraordinary journeys they have undertaken.”
​
British ceramicist Edmund de Waal wrote his family memoir The Hare with Amber Eyes in 2010. It tells the story of the Ephrussi, once a wealthy European Jewish banking dynasty, based in Odessa, Vienna and Paris. The Ephrussis lost almost everything in 1938 when the Nazis confiscated their property. A collection of 264 Japanese netsuke miniature sculptures survived, tucked away inside a mattress by a loyal maid at Palais Ephrussi in Vienna during the war years. The collection has been passed down through five generations of the Ephrussi family, providing a common thread for the story of its fortunes from 1871 to 2009.

The Netsuke Collection of Charles Ephrussi (1849 – 1905) was acquired in Paris in the 1870s as a wedding gift to his cousin Ritter Viktor von Ephrussi (1860 – 1945) and Baroness Emilie (Emmy) Schey von Koromla (1879 – 1938). It was retrieved postwar from their hiding place by their daughter Elizabeth de Waal (1899 – 1991); given by her brother Ignaz (Iggie) Ephrussi (1906 – 1994). It was bequeathed by him to his great nephew Edmund de Waal (born 1964).


*with buyer’s premium.