"264 wood and ivory carvings of animals, plants and people none of them larger than a matchbox: apprentice potter Edmund de Waal was entranced by the collection when he first saw it in the Tokyo apartment of his Great Uncle Iggie. Later, when Edmund inherited the netsuke', they unlocked a story far larger than he could ever have imagined... The Ephrussis hailed from Odessa, and at one time were the largest grain exporters in the world; in the 1870s, Charles Ephrussi was part of a wealthy new generation settling in Paris. An early supporter of the Impressionists; Marcel Proust was briefly his secretary and used him as the model for the aesthete Swann in Remembrance of Things Past. Charles's passion was collecting, and the netsuke, were sent as a wedding present to his banker cousin in Vienna. he netsuke were banished to the bride's dressing room. But later, three children including a young Ignace would play with the collection as history reverberated around them. The Anchsluss, followed by World War II, swept the Ephrussis to the brink of oblivion, and almost the only thing that remained of their vast empire was the netsuke collection, smuggled out of their huge Viennese pal