num_pages: 192
description: A tragic family history told in a collection of imaginary letters to a famed collector Moise de CamondoLetters to Camondo is a collection of imaginary letters from Edmund de Waal to Moise de Camondo the banker and art collector who created a spectacular house in Paris now the Muse Nissim de Camondo and filled it with the greatest private collection of French eighteenth-century art.The Camondos were a Jewish family from Constantinople the Rothschilds of the East who made their home in Paris in the 1870s and became philanthropists art collectors and fixtures of Belle poque high society as well as being targets of antisemitismmuch like de Waal's relations the Ephrussi family to whom they were connected. Moise de Camondo created a spectacular house and filled it with art for his son Nissim; after Nissim was killed in the First World War the house was bequeathed to the French state. Eventually the Camondos were murdered by the Nazis.After de Waal one of the worlds greatest ceramic artists was invited to make an exhibition in the Camondo house he began to write letters to Moise de Camondo. These fifty letters are deeply personal reflections on assimilation melancholy family art the vicissitudes of history and the value of memory.
language: English
title: Letters to Camondo
publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux