WORK OF THE WEEK: Edmund de Waal

Edmund de Waal
at night, 2025
Belgian black fossil stone
58 x 180 x 51 cm
22 ⅘ x 70 ⅘ x 20 in.

When Edmund de Waal works in black, it is not in one singular tone or shade, but a spectrum. In these new benches, which are delicately carved from Kilkenny limestone and Belgian black fossil stone, thousands of tiny fossils glitter over the surface, an effect that is heightened by slight rhythmic curves in the form. As the light moves, more and more detail emerges from the surface.

In at night, the title refers to a poem by Osip Mandelstam, I was washing at night out in the yard.

I was washing at night out in the yard
By Osip Mandelstam
Translated By Peter France

I was washing at night out in the yard—
the heavens glowing with rough stars.
A star-beam like salt upon an axe,
the water barrel brimful and cold.

A padlock makes the gate secure,
and conscience gives sternness to the earth—
hard to find a standard anywhere
purer than the truth of new-made cloth.

A star melts in the barrel like salt,
and the ice-cold winter is blacker still,
death is more pure, disaster saltier
and earth more truthful and more terrible.

“I have been a potter for decades. These new works in stone extend my love of how objects can be moved around and interacted with. They celebrate place and movement, running water and sitting still. I’m so pleased that I can show them here at the New Art Centre in a landscape I’ve loved for twenty five years.”

- Edmund de Waal

Detail: Edmund de Waal, at night, 2025, Belgian black fossil stone

Edmund de Waal (b. 1964) is known for the way his practice spans both visual and literary disciplines. Much of de Waal's work is centred around the contingency of memory: bringing particular histories of loss and exile into renewed life.

Among his major installations on permanent display are Signs & Wonders (2009) at the V&A Museum, London and an idea (for the journey) (2013) at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. De Waal was made an OBE in 2011, and in 2021 was made a CBE for his Services to the Arts. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2021. De Waal was on the Advisory Committee for the Royal Mint and was a Trustee of the V&A Museum between 2011 – 2019. He was a Trustee of the Gilbert Trust between 2011 – 2024, and a member of the Young V&A Committee between 2020 – 2023. In 2015 he was awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize for non-fiction by Yale University. He has received honorary doctorates from the University of the Arts London, Nottingham, Sheffield, York and Canterbury Christ Church universities and is an Honorary Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge.

Edmund de Waal’s current exhibition, Playing with Fire: Edmund de Waal and Axel Salto, is set to open at The Hepworth Wakefield on November 22nd, 2025, following its tour in Denmark and Norway this year. His work is also included in The Life of Things at Museum Voorlinden, Netherlands until November 2025.

Edmund de Waal
at night, 2025
Belgian black fossil stone