The unlocked vitrine: counter- Wunderkammer and the ethics of collecting in The Hare with Amber Eyes

This article reads Edmund de Waal’s The Hare with Amber Eyes (2010) through the idea of the cabinet of curiosities, arguing that de Waal repurposes a collecting tradition historically tied to aristocratic display into an intimate practice of mourning and care. The article shows how Charles Ephrussi’s nineteenth-century acquisition of the netsuke is shaped by class aspiration, assimilation, and the exoticising pull of the Other, while de Waal’s later return to them shifts collecting towards intimacy and touch. Focusing on the hidden labour behind netsuke production, it argues that de Waal – writing as a ceramicist – partly restores the presence of making and makers. Bringing together genealogy and an attention to embodied memory and touch, the article proposes that de Waal’s reopened vitrine functions as a counter-Wunderkammer: an archive of displacement and survival rather than a spectacle of dominion. In doing so, The Hare with Amber Eyes shows how collections can hold histories of power while also enabling practices of care.