Hare with Amber Eyes

When this book came out in 2010, it was immediately a candidate for everyone's best of the year list. "The Hare with Amber Eyes" by Edmund De Waal is a fascinating family history which ranges from the France of Marcel Proust, the Vienna of Franz Joseph, and post-war Japan.Edmund De Waal is one of Britain's leading potters and was trained in both England and Japan. He is also a member of the Ephussi family, a prominent Jewish family of the European Belle Epoque.The Ephussi were originally grain traders operating out of Odessa with offices in St Petersburg, London, Vienna, and Paris. The wealth that success in the wheat trade brought also led to the creation of great collections of paintings, porcelain, furniture, and sculpture. The hare of the title was part of a collection of netsuke originally collected by the author's distant Cousin Charles.Following its opening in 1858 by Commodore Perry, Japan and things from the Edo and Meiji period became a positive mania in Europe and America. Charles Ephussi, along with collecting impressionist paintings and serving as a model for Proust's Charles Swann, formed a collection of 263 different carved wooded animals, vegetables, and peoples out of boxwood and ivory. Like all of he Ephussis in the book, Charles was largely secularized Jew who delighted in the aesthetic life of secular Paris. This made him an outsider and insider at the same time. This ability to move easily in some worlds and not in others made him a detached figure of the Belle Epoque and in some ways and emblematic of the period. For aesthetes of the Third Republic there was a fascination with the exotic and Edmund De Waal speculates how his cousin would have displayed his collection and what it was meant to say about himself. The Palais Ephussi in Paris was meant to express all that was modern and up to date. Charles placed his netsuke collection in the salon in an effort to heighten the experience of his guests when visiting. As a potter De Waal is fascinated by the tactile aspect of the netsuke and devotes a great deal of descriptive imagination to handling these objects and the effort made to incorporate them into the collection of objects that formed the world of Charles Ephussi and his circle of orchid wearing aesthetes. In a sense the descriptions are almost akin to those of the people of Lady Marasaki's characters in "The Tale of Genji." This bias toward an Asian aesthetic was maintained until the fashion changed for a more neo-classical aesthetic. Like Proust's character Odette, who initially filled her apartment with Japanese objects, textiles and fans, Charles was soon converted to a revival of neoclassicism that was a part of the Art Nouveau movement. Eventually there was no place for the netsuke in Paris and they were sent to Vienna.The aesthetic appreciation of the netsuke with its rarified hothouse atmosphere was changed when they passed into the hands of Victor and Emmie Ephussi of Vienna. Like Charles, they led the lives of secular Jews, completely outside of the life of the synagogue. When a member of the family married, the Ephussi were notoriously unable to know what to do and where to sit .Victor was a banker and his wife Emmie was femme fatal. Very much at home in the social whirl of Vienna in the last days of the Hapsburg monarchy, he collected rare books, she collected lovers, sometimes the odd archduke and fine clothes. Here the netsuke were used in a different manner, as the source of stories that Emmie told her children before going out to an endless array of parties.World War I spelled the end to this fine life and led to a decline of the Ephussi and Palais Ephussi on the Ringstrasser. Patriotically, Viktor bought Imperial bonds, which proved worthless when the war was over and empire was dissolved.The interwar years accelerated this decline. In an effort to comprehend the loss of empire, the petty bourgeois turned to extreme right wing politics, and the patriotic Viktor was accused of all manner of Jewish conspiracies to bring down the Hapsburg empire and the pan-German volk..The rise of the Nazis and the incorporation of Vienna was something the Ephussi family heads, Victor and Emmie could scarcely comprehend. In the world of Palais Ephussi, outside uncouth elements could scarcely be comprehended. Viktor's daughter, who had brazenly attended university and studied law was instrumental in attempting to get her parents out of the country. The other children managed to make their way to Mexico and the US. The netsuke were not among the things coveted by the Nazis and this collection was spirited away by Emmie's lady's maid Anna.After the war, the netsuke collection was passed to Ignace who after a career in the US fashion industry, military intelligence in World War II, ended up in Japan as a banker, his father's profession.Here the netsuke became artifacts of an authentic Japanese world. Thus they had moved from objects of aesthetic contemplation, to object to amuse children, to objects hidden from the Nazis to a link with the Japanese past in the midst of a whole host of changes that signified the post war world. Eventually the netsuke made their way to the UK where they became, for the author, a source of family continuity.This is a book about not only history, but it is a meditation on the way that the world can change meaning and interpretation. The netsuke not only provide a thread that runs through the history of the Ephussi family, uniting its various elements, but also provides the reader with understandings concerning the passage of time and the movement of history. It is well worth reading slowly and leisurely in a manner consistent with the circle of Charles Ephussi or the patrons of the author's pottery.

DeWaal takes us on a journey from the gilded age through the present with the unifying device a collection of netsuke, first owned by a long ago relative who was involved in many aspects of Paris society,including the impressionist movement. As a matter of fact , he is portrayed in the painting,"luncheon of the boating party". It is particularly interesting to me that these different branches of the Ephrussi family include the ones who built a villa with fantastic gardens in Cap Ferrat and the villa kerylos, modelled on a Greek villa by a relative who was also an archeologist. The two villas are now national monuments.I visited them some years ago,struck by their uniquenes and the fantastic and beautiful gardens .that the netsuke begin in Japan and end in Japan before being inherited by the author is also interesting. The author retraces their journey, from Japan, to Paris to pre war Vienna. Any student of history can surmise what happens next,as the Anschluss begins and all properties of Jews , including the banking families Ephrussi and Rothschild , are confiscated.thus the story is of loss , not only of possessions, but family members who fail to escape the Nazis. How the netsuke collection survives intact and how it returns to a descendant of the original owner is a fascinating,sad and engrossing story.easily one of the best books I have read this year.

If you enjoy historical memoir, you'll love the Hare with the Amber Eyes. This is not just a story about art--the netsuke, hand-carved Japanese figurines--but a story about people.The author traces the home of his family's collection of 264 netsuke (BTW, I Googled them so I could visualize them) from the hands of his uncle in the 1870's (Uncle Charles) to his own hands in the 21st Century. But, the story goes way beyond the "lives" of the Japanese figurines. The author tells us about the people who owned them. We learn that his Uncle Charles was a great art collector. He not only acquired the netsuke but many other pieces of art--including the works of Renoir, Manet, Degas and many more. He was also a friend of Proust. There's a wonderful photo in the text, painted by Degas which shows his uncle in the background.This is a story about a great Jewish family, Ephrussi, who migrated from Odessa Russia where they made their first fortune in grain shipping, to France to Vienna. They became amazingly rich as bankers and financiers. [Tweet "This is a story about the family's rise and fall #amreading"] It is a story about loss. Tragedy drips from every page as the time period nears World War II and Vienna. Loss begins during World War I. The author shares insights and records from his great-great grandparents, his grandmother, his great uncle and his father. All pertinent to the life of the netsuke.As a reader I was spellbound. Fearful not just for the people but for the netsuke. As a reader I learned so much. For example, how compulsively Japanese art was collected in the 1870's and forgotten or abandoned by the 1890's. How persecution of the Jews ran rampart not just in Nazi Germany but throughout the 1800's as well as throughout cities like Paris and Vienna. How the people hated the Jews for their success. I learned much about hatred, about loyalty, about love and about art.This book goes from Paris in the 1870's to Japan in the 1940's. With Vienna during World Wars I and II in between. There's a slight diversion to Odessa to finish the cycle of the family's history.The writing is beautiful. If you were like me, you'll feel the tension, distress, and fear when the Nazi's enter Vienna. Yes, we all know they're coming, but he writes in a way the builds the tension. Would the family get out? Will the netsuke survive the theft and plundering of the art throughout the city?This book won several awards and deservedly so.It's on my must-read list!

Brillante Investigación y construcción de una historia con base en un objeto. Magnífica recuperación de la memoria

A compelling human story

Wie erwartet

This is a book that I have found almost impossible to put down and have only done so in order to digest it more slowly. It is a beautifully crafted narrative and history of a family's lives and fortunes, which illuminates the events and tragedies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in some quite unexpected ways. An important read.

The beginning of the book was dense with detail but over time as the characters were developed it became more and more a compelling read.Imagine if you can a political society that embraces minimization, then extermination, all while artistic accomplishments are being hoarded.The descriptions of living in the different cities/societies is quite interesting and well developed. However, man's inhumanity to others is overriding and disturbing.After a challenging beginning, a great read.