The expanded jewelry edition in paperback "Japanese Miniature Carvings in Wood and Ivory - 264 Netsuke" is displayed in the showcase of British potter Edmund de Waal, a descendant of the Jewish Ephrussi family from Odessa. This memoir tells how they came to be there. From the Paris of the Belle Époque, the collection moved to Vienna at the Fin de Siècle and finally made its way to London from Tokyo in the 1950s. The Ephrussis, once equal in influence and wealth to the Rothschilds, experienced a decline with the annexation in 1938 - their entire fortune fell victim to Aryanization. Only the netsuke were saved - each one individually - in the apron of the maid Anna. A family chronicle that reflects European history over the last hundred and fifty years, a cabinet of curiosities, a brilliantly written exploration of possession and loss, about the life of things.