Edmund de Waal (b.1964) is one of the world's leading ceramic artists and a renowned historian of the medium. His work has been widely exhibited at galleries and museums in the UK and Europe, and he will present exhibitions in 2013 at the Gagosian Gallery in New York, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. He has written widely on art and ceramics, including books on Bernard Leach and 20th-century ceramics, and The Hare with Amber Eyes (2010) won the Costa Biography Award, New Writer of the Year at the Galaxy Book Awards, and the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize. In 2011 he was awarded an OBE for services to art.

Emma Crichton-Miller, a journalist specializing in applied arts and crafts, contributes an in-depth biographical survey and critical analysis of de Waal and his work. She writes for the Financial Times, The Times and the Royal Academy Magazine, among other publications.

Also includes contributions by novelists Colm Toíbín, Peter Carey and AS Byatt, and critical essays by Guggenheim curator Alexandra Munroe and architect Deborah Saunt.