The French Count Who Turned His Home Into a Museum to Honor His Dead Son
The siblings Béatrice and Nissim de Camondo, in 1916. When Nissim, a fighter pilot, died for France in World War I, his father, Moïse, decided to leave the family’s grand Parisian house and collection to the state. Edmund de Waal’s “Letters to Camondo” is an homage to the family and their home.Credit.Bridgeman Art Library
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By Maurice Samuels
By Edmund de Waal
Three unwieldy boxes of porcelain collect dust in the basement of my building. Sealed away after my grandmother’s death 30 years ago, they contain rococo lamps, fragile urns and multiple sets of gilt-edged china that can’t go in the dishwasher. I will probably never unpack these impractical relics. But I keep them because they represent a link beautiful yet brittle to people I have lost.
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The struggle to save Sursock Palace after Beirut blast
Updated / Sunday, 2 May 2021
07:00
Furniture and artworks were damaged in the Sursock Palace after the Beirut port explosion
The palace owned by the Lebanese and Anglo-Irish family, the Sursock Cochranes, suffered extensive damage to its building and artwork during the Beirut port blast last August, writes Hannah McCarthy.
The damage, caused by the 3,000 tonnes of ammonium nitrate which ignited last August at the port, has placed an enormous burden on a population of Beirut that was already struggling with economic and political meltdown.
Since 2019, when the economic situation in the country quickly deteriorated, Lebanese banks have imposed strict capital controls on their customers. As a result, the majority of the population (those without high-level political connections) have only been able to withdraw the equivalent of a few hundred dollars from their accounts, even after the port blast, which left 300,000 people hom
Enough with the imperial nostalgia and identity politics. Let museums live Tristram Hunt © Provided by The Guardian Photograph: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images
The past fortnight of frenzied shopping has led Bernard Donoghue, boss of the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions, to ask: “Why is H&M open, but not the V&A?” Or, indeed, massage parlours and gyms, but not the People’s History Museum or Castle Howard. You can watch snooker at the Sheffield Crucible, but still not enjoy the Ruskin Collection at Sheffield Museum. In France, anger at art’s long Covid has led to public petitions demanding an end to museum lockdowns and out-of-work actors staging theatre sit-ins.
In his 2010 bestseller
The Hare with Amber Eyes, the potter Edmund de Waal told the story of his mother’s family – the Ephrussis – through 264 Japanese
netsuke (tiny ivory sculptures) that were bought by one of her forebears in Paris in the 1870s, said Allan Massie in The Scotsman. His marvellous new book is a companion piece to that volume, which brings to life another art-loving Jewish banking family who were their neighbours in Paris.
Hailing from Istanbul, the Camondos settled in the city in the 1860s, building a palatial home on the Rue de Monceau – then an enclave of the “haute juiverie” – which they filled with exquisite pieces. De Waal’s book takes the form of a series of imaginary letters to Count Moïse de Camondo, who inherited the property from his father in 1911, and who stipulated in his own will (he died in 1935) that it be preserved as a museum, which it still is. Those who enjoyed
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