Edmund de Waal, OBE is a renowned contemporary artist, ceramicist, and author, best known for his large-scale installations of porcelain vessels. His work is often related to ideas of collections and archives, as well as history and the contingency of memory, and has been displayed by numerous museums and galleries throughout the world. His family memoir, The Hare with Amber Eyes, won several awards following its 2010 publication. De Waal's first venture into sound art was A Quiet Corner in Time, a collaboration with composer and sound designer Simon Fisher Turner, which was released in 2020.

Originally from Nottingham, England, Edmund de Waal began studying ceramics at the age of five. After earning a scholarship and graduating with first-class honours from the University of Cambridge in 1986, he earned a post-graduate diploma in Japanese language at Sheffield University, while continuing to work with porcelain and ceramics. After a period of studying in Japan, he settled in London in 1993, and made his first public art exhibition in 1995. His work throughout the remainder of the decade was highly influenced by modernism and the Bauhaus movement, but after 2000, he moved away from smaller items, such as pots and kettles, and moved on to larger collections of vessels, grouped in relation to openings and spaces. He published The Hare with Amber Eyes, a memoir of the Russian Jewish Ephrussi family, in 2010, and the book was the recipient of awards such as the Costa Book Award for Biography and the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize. De Waal was awarded the Order of the British Empire for Service to the Arts in 2011. He published The White Road, a book detailing the chronology of his interest in porcelain, in 2015.

De Waal worked with composer and sound artist Simon Fisher Turner in 2018 on an installation at the Schindler House in Los Angeles, titled – one way or other –. A recording of the music for the installation, A Quiet Corner in Time, was issued by Mute in 2020. Additionally, the two artists contributed to STUMM433, Mute's multi-artist collection of interpretations of John Cage's infamous silent composition, 4'33". ~ Paul Simpson, Rovi