It is built in the late nineteenth century, at the height of Japonisme in France by Charles Ephrussi, a rich Jewish art critic attending Proust, the Goncourt and the impressionist painters. The collection is offered as a wedding gift to a cousin Viktor Ephrussi, great banker of Vienna. After the first war, nationalism burst the Ephrussi family and destroy their wealth. Then the Nazis annexed Austria, Vienna and the Ephrussi palace; but netsuke escape their hidden in a mattress by Anna Women's dedicated room. Iggy, Viktor's son decides to return them to their country of origin and moved to Japan where he will end his life.
The highest artistic and financial spheres to the drama of the Shoah, the journey in the company of Ephrussis is immense and moving. And we keep coming back to objects: the feel, the touch, the small world shared by their owners, the psychological states that are transmitted from generation to generation, such as the household gods, the Roman gods own to each household that families carrying their migration.
