’the eight directions of the wind’ at The Huntington

How can clay from the Appalachian Mountains, Kilkenny stone from Ireland, and porcelain made in the Song Dynasty come together cohesively? In “the eight directions of the wind” at The Huntington, lauded author and artist Edmund de Waal explores how art made from these materials, among many pieces of porcelain and poetry, connects histories across borders and through time.

Edmund de Waal was born in Nottingham, England, in 1964, and is the son of the former Dean of Canterbury, Victor de Waal. At The King’s School in Canterbury, he began working with Geoffrey Whiting, a student of the famous English potter, Bernard Leach. At 17, he deferred entry to Cambridge for a two-year apprenticeship with Whiting. “Was I a normal teenager? No, not really,” de Waal once told The Guardian. “I had a strange, attenuated life – living in the Deanery in Canterbury, which is a vast medieval and Elizabethan house, with 15 bedrooms and a library and 50 portraits of deans on the wall; and there was a curfew bell at 9 o’clock, when the cathedral gates were locked, and you had to be let out by a porter.”

After studying English at Cambridge, de Waal began in British studio pottery before turning to porcelain in the late 1980s. Both his art and literature have redefined the possibilities of ceramics through dialogue with other media, such as poetry. He investigates themes of diaspora and materiality with his works, which have been displayed in several renowned museums, including the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the British Museum in London, and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. De Waal was awarded a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) for his services to art in 2021 and received the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2024.

“De Waal is among the most innovative and intellectually profound artists working today, and we are honored to collaborate with him on a project that so deeply resonates with The Huntington’s efforts to illuminate the movement of ideas across time and place,” said Christina Nielsen, Hannah and Russel Kully Director of the Art Museum at The Huntington. “His installations offer meditations on beauty, displacement, and the fragility of culture.”

“the eight directions of the wind” is a yearlong exhibition that is composed of three site-specific installations: “on sanctuary” in the Huntington Art Gallery, “on porcelain” in the Chinese Garden’s Studio for Lodging the Mind, and “on shadows” in the Japanese Garden’s Marsh Tea House. Each installation weaves new connections and serves as a contemplative guide through The Huntington’s spaces.

As part of “on sanctuary,” de Waal displays restored 18th-century Meissen plates once owned by the von Klemperer family. The pieces were plundered by the Nazis and later damaged during the Allied bombing of Dresden in World War II. In collaboration with artist Maiko Tsutsumi, the plates were restored using the traditional Japanese art of kintsugi. Fractured pieces are repaired with urushi lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. “It’s a way of using gold and lacquer to mark loss; to mark all the brokenness of the history of these objects,” stated de Waal. “For me, these objects are a way of showing history; of showing a family’s loss; of marking hugely painful, complicated, and unfinished history.”

The installations also feature objects made by several famous artisans. Among them is a teapot made by Kazimir Malevich, a pioneering Russian avant-garde artist who paved the way for 20th-century abstract art. Another work includes porcelain produced by Sèvres, the celebrated French manufactory that created pieces for royalty, inlaid into a secretaire made by Bernard Molitor. Molitor, an ébéniste (cabinetmaker) to Marie-Antoinette and the French aristocracy, continued to find success after the French Revolution. Additionally, “on sanctuary” includes fragments of 18th-century basalt ware by Josiah Wedgwood, a visionary potter and industrialist whose innovations transformed Britain and the ceramics industry.

When viewed together, the works, their origins, and their histories create a reflective cross-cultural experience. “This exhibition is a meditation on belonging and the stories that objects carry,” de Waal said. “Porcelain, to me, is a way to speak across cultures and time.”

Meissen plate from the collection of Gustav von Klemperer, ca. 1760–1765. Porcelain, with kintsugi by Maiko Tsutsumi. Courtesy of Edmund de Waal. Photo by Alzbeta Jaresova.