Edmund de Waal employs things as vehicles for history, human narrative, and emotion in both his literary and visual art. His installations explore themes of diaspora, memory, and materiality through handcrafted porcelain containers, frequently housed within minimalist structures.

De Waal (b. 1964, Nottingham, England) spent his formative years as an apprentice to the well-known potter Geoffrey Whiting. This experience sparked his interest in fusing medieval English techniques with Chinese and Japanese ceramic traditions. After graduating from the University of Cambridge in 1986 with a BA in English literature, De Waal went on to win a Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation scholarship in 1991. This allowed him to study at the Mejiro Ceramics studio in Tokyo and earn a postgraduate diploma in Japanese language from the University of Sheffield.

After moving back to London in 1993, de Waal turned his attention from stoneware to porcelain and started experimenting with how to arrange various items, including jugs, bottles, and teapots. Groupings, or "cargoes," of asymmetrical porcelain containers would take center stage in his work and change in size and scope throughout time. At the Geffrye Museum (now the Museum of the Home) in London, de Waal created The Porcelain Room in 2002. There, he placed 650 containers on shelves and inside openings in the floor and ceiling of a room that was lit by a porcelain window. This was one of his first significant architectural interventions.

Considering the construction and arrangement of ceramic receptacles as a kind of poetry, de Waal has persisted in transforming environments through his creations. 425 glazed porcelain pieces were arranged on a crimson shelf along the inner ledge of the museum's topmost cupola for the Signs & Wonders (2009) exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The display was a celebration of the museum's new ceramics galleries as well as a love letter to its collection. 2019 saw the exhibition Elective Affinities, which put de Waal's boats up against notable pieces from the Frick Collection in New York.

Since De Waal works in multiple media and collaborates with museums, poets, performers, musicians, and other visual artists—both alive and dead—his sculpture practice, writing, and art history studies are intricately linked. Inspired by a nightmare drawing by Albrecht Dürer, de Waal's 2016 exhibition During the Night at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, was the result of three years of research into the museum's collection. During that time, he examined such remarkable objects as paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder and corals dating back to the sixteenth century.

In 2018, de Waal worked with choreographer Wayne McGregor to create the set for the latter's new dance, Yugen, which was presented at the Royal Opera House in London. He collaborated with composer Simon Fisher Turner on the -one way or other- exhibition that was held at the Schindler House in West Hollywood, California, the same year.

The following year, de Waal organized psalm, a two-part exhibition at the Museo Ebraico and the Ateneo Veneto that examined Venice's musical and literary past in conjunction with the 58th Biennale di Venezia. Two thousand books by exiled authors from Ovid's time to the present were gathered in the library of exile (2019), a pavilion constructed inside the Ateneo Veneto. The majority of the texts were translated. Following its Venice exhibition, the project made its way to the British Museum in London in 2020, and then on to the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden in Germany. The books were given in 2021 to the Iraqi University of Mosul library, which had been destroyed in 2015.

2010 saw the release of de Waal's critically acclaimed novel The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance, which became an international bestseller. This memoir, which has been translated into more than thirty languages, is about loss, diaspora, and the survival of artifacts. It was awarded the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize (2011) and the Costa Book Award for Biography (2010). In addition to receiving Yale University's 2015 Windham Campbell Prize for nonfiction, De Waal also released The White Road: Journey into an Obsession, an intimate history of porcelain recounted through the testimonies of those whose lives have been deeply impacted by the material.

Published in April 2021, Letters to Camondo is a disturbing series of letters that de Waal believed he was writing to Count Moïse de Camondo (1860–1935), a historical character who had a mansion in Paris that was adorned with exquisite goods and that he used as a memorial for his son who had vanished. Since 1936, the mansion has been the Musée Nissim de Camondo, and it hasn't changed. New dimensions of the family narrative are revealed by the letters and a companion exhibition, which are the result of thorough examinations of the museum's collections and archives.

De Waal's art focuses a lot on collections and collecting; that is, how items are scattered, lost, or stolen. His writing and pottery add a sense of quiet serenity to the conceptual and practical conversations between minimalism, architecture, and sound. Their meditative nature is neither ambivalent nor neutral, nevertheless. A unique aesthetic theory that prioritizes the hand, touch, and consequently the human being, is evident throughout de Waal's work. By bringing to life and sharing important tales, it aims to bring people together.