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with research and translation, in particular Georgina Wilson, Hannah James, Tom Otter, Susannah Otter, Chantal Riekel and Aurogeeta Das. Dr Jo Catling of the University of East Anglia has been invaluable for her work on the Rilke/Ephrussi papers and Mark Hinton of Christies was a great help in elucidating signatures on the netsuke. Carys Davis, my studio manager, has kept the world at bay, and been a tremendous interlocutor day by day.

I would like to thank Giselle de Bogarde Scantlebury, the late Marie-Louise von Motesiczky, Francis Spufford, Jenny Turner, Madeleine Bessborough, Anthony Sinclair, Brian Dillon, James Harding, Lydia Syson, Mark Jones, A.S. Byatt, Charles Saumerez-Smith, Ruth Saunders, Amanda Renshaw, Tim Barringer, Jorunn Veiteberg, Rosie Thomas, Vikram Seth and Joram ten Brink. I am particularly grateful to Martina Margetts, Philip Watson and Fiona MacCarthy, all of whom have kept faith with this book.

Thank you to the staff at the London Library, the National Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Library, Cambridge University Library, Courtauld Institute, Goethe Institute, Musée d’Orsay, Louvre, Bibliothèque Nationale, National Library Tokyo, Israelitische Kultusgemeinde, Adler Society of Vienna. In Vienna, I would like to thank Sophie Lillie for all her pioneering work on restitution, to Anna Staudacher and Wolf-Erich Eckstein at the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde, to Georg Gaugusch and Christopher Wentworth-Stanley for help on genealogies, and thanks go to Martin Drschka of Casinos Austria for his welcome to the Palais Ephrussi. In Odessa, Mark Naidorf, Anna Misyuk and Alexander (Sasha) Rozenboim guided me through some of the history of the Efrussi.

Felicity Bryan has been the most wonderful agent and encourager. I want to record my gratitude to her and her colleagues at the Felicity Bryan Agency, and to Zoe Pagnamenta, and all the staff at Andrew Nurnberg Associates. I’d also like to thank Juliet Brooke and Kate Bland at Chatto. Jonathan Galassi at Farrar, Straus and Giroux has been a marvellous advocate from the start.

I have been overwhelmed by the care, dedication and imagination which my two editors have taken. Clara Farmer at Chatto wrote to me asking if the book existed. She and Courtney Hodell at FSG have made this book happen and I am deeply indebted to them both.

Above all I want to record my love and gratitude to my late grandmother Elisabeth and my late great-uncle Iggie, to my mother Esther de Waal, to my father Victor de Waal and to Jiro Sugiyama.

I could not have written this book without the sustaining generosity of my wife Sue Chandler. It is for our children Ben, Matthew and Anna.

Edmund de Waal’s porcelain is shown in many museum collections round the world and he has recently made installations for the V&A and Tate Britain. He was apprenticed as a potter, studied in Japan and read English at Cambridge. He is Professor of Ceramics at the University of Westminster and lives in London with his family.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title

Copyright

Dedication

Family Tree

Preface

Part One Paris 1871–1899

Le West End

Un lit de parade

‘A mahout to guide her’

‘So light, so soft to the touch’

A box of children’s sweets

A fox with inlaid eyes, in wood

The yellow armchair

Monsieur Elstir’s asparagus

Even Ephrussi fell for it

My small profits

A ‘very brilliant five o’clock’

Part Two Vienna 1899–1938

Die Potemkinische Stadt

Zionstrasse

History as it happens

‘A large square box such as children draw’

‘Liberty Hall’

The sweet young thing

Once upon a time

Types of the Old City

Heil Wien! Heil Berlin!

Literally zero

You must change your life

Eldorado 5-0050

Part Three Vienna, Kövesces, Tunbridge Wells, Vienna 1938–1947

‘An ideal spot for mass marches’

‘A never-to-be-repeated opportunity’

‘Good for a single journey’

The tears of things

Anna’s pocket

‘All quite openly, publicly and legally’

Part Four Tokyo 1947–2001

Takenoko

Kodachrome

Where did you get them?

The real