Playing with Fire

A conversation across time and space connecting words, images and ceramics from Edmund de Waal and Axel Salto

Renowned artist and writer Edmund de Waal (born 1964) meets acclaimed Danish ceramist Axel Salto (1889-1961), considered one of the greatest masters of 20th-century ceramic art. Salto was a poet and critic, artist and textile designer, whose work-much like de Waal's-plays on the memorial, the expressible and the intangible, and the ability or lack of language to define these feelings. Both men's multifaceted practices interact in harmony in this delicate, thoughtful book. Playing with Fire begins with excerpts from Salto's writings, including poems, design treatises and more, illustrated by archival copies of his publications from the 1930s and 1940s. In the latter part of the book, de Waal responds to Salto's life and legacy in a meditative essay, while we watch him at work in his studio. Admirers of contemporary ceramics or de Waal's bestselling memoir The Hare with the Amber Eyes will be enthralled with this moving publication.