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Kintsugi: The Centuries Old Art of Repairing Broken Pottery with Gold
Translated
to “golden joinery,” Kintsugi (or Kintsukuroi, which means
“golden repair”) is the centuries-old Japanese art of fixing broken pottery
with a special lacquer dusted with powdered gold, silver, or platinum.
Beautiful seams of gold glint in the cracks of ceramic ware, giving a unique
appearance to the piece.
This
repair method celebrates each artifact's unique history by emphasizing its
fractures and breaks instead of hiding or disguising them. Kintsugi often makes
the repaired piece even more beautiful than the original, revitalizing it with
new life.
By repairing broken ceramics, it is possible to give a
new lease on life to pottery that will become even more refined thanks to its
“scars”. The Japanese art of kintsugi teaches that broken objects are not
something to hide but to display with pride.
When a
bowl, teapot or precious vase falls and breaks into a thousand pieces, we throw
them away angrily and regretfully. Yet there is an alternative, a Japanese
practice that highlights and enhances the breaks thus adding value to the
broken object. It’s called kintsugi (金継ぎ), or kintsukuroi (金繕い), literally golden (“kin”) and repair (“tsugi”).
The Technique
This
traditional Japanese art uses a precious metal – liquid gold, liquid silver or
lacquer dusted with powdered gold – to bring together the pieces of a broken
pottery item and at the same time enhance the breaks. The technique consists in
joining fragments and giving them a new, more refined aspect. Every repaired
piece is unique, because of the randomness with which ceramics shatters and the
irregular patterns formed that are enhanced with the use of metals.
With
this technique, it’s possible to create true and always different works of art,
each with its own story and beauty, thanks to the unique cracks formed when the
object breaks, as if they were wounds that leave different marks on each of us.
There are 3 predominant styles of Kintsugi: crack,
piece method, and joint-call. While, in each case, gold-dusted epoxy is used to
fix the broken pottery, the methods themselves vary. Objects mended using the
crack approach are touched up with minimal lacquer, while works restored with
the piece method feature replacement fragments made entirely of epoxy. Finally,
pieces fixed using the joint-call technique employ similarly-shaped pieces from
other broken wares, combining 2 aesthetically different works into 1 uniquely
unified product.
Legend Has It
The
kintsugi technique may have been invented around the fifteenth century, when
Ashikaga Yoshimasa, the eighth shogun of the Ashikaga shogunate after breaking
his favorite cup of tea sent it to China to get it repaired. Unfortunately, at
that time the objects were repaired with unsightly and impractical metal
ligatures. It seemed that the cup was unrepairable but its owner decided to try
to have some Japanese craftsmen repair it. They were surprised at the shogun’s
steadfastness, so they decided to transform the cup into a jewel by filling its
cracks with lacquered resin and powdered gold. The legend seems plausible
because the invention of kintsugi is set in a very fruitful era for art in
Japan.
Even
today, it may take up to a month to repair the largest and most refined pieces
of ceramics with the kintsugi technique, given the different steps and the
drying time required.
What It Teaches Us
The
kintsugi technique suggests many things. We shouldn’t throw away broken
objects. When an object breaks, it doesn’t mean that it is no more useful. Its
breakages can become valuable. We should try to repair things because sometimes
in doing so we obtain more valuable objects. This is the essence of resilience.
Each of us should look for a way to cope with traumatic events in a positive
way, learn from negative experiences, take the best from them and convince
ourselves that exactly these experiences make each person unique, precious.
Since
its conception, Kintsugi has been heavily influenced by prevalent philosophical
ideas. Namely, the practice is related to the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi,
which calls for seeing beauty in the flawed or imperfect. The repair method was
also born from the Japanese feeling of mottainai, which expresses regret
when something is wasted, as well as mushin, the acceptance of change.
Another philosophy which is often
spoken about in the same context as Kintsugi has to be the Japanese notion of
‘no mind’ wherein the concepts of fate, acceptance of change (be it positive or
destructive) and the concepts of non-association are considered integral
aspects of human life and existence.
Kintsugi
Today
Many artists and craftspeople today—both in Japan and
abroad—continue to keep this ancient tradition alive. English embroidery expert
Charlotte Bailey, Japanese artist Tomomi Kamoshita, and
Korean creative Yee Sookyung
incorporate the practice into their art. (These are absolutely beautiful, please check them out)
