Kintsugi

The Japanese Art for Healing a Broken World

Kintsugi (literally, golden joinery) is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with golden repairs, and its core values of conservation, honesty and the celebration of the imperfect provide a unique window into Japanese culture. Differing from the Western technique of pottery repair, where breaks and fills are painted to match the surface color of the clay or glaze so that repairs are invisible (or nearly so), kintsugi honors the history of the object by celebrating and enhancing its flaws.

This honesty closely aligns with the Buddhist philosophy of the transience of life and acceptance of reality, as well as with the chanoyu (tea ceremony culture) appreciation of beauty found in age—in worn and imperfect things—known as wabi-sabi. Where did the art of kintsugi originate? There is a theory that 15th century Shogun Yoshimasa Ashigaka (1436-1490), a devoted practitioner of chanoyu and an influential arbiter of taste, sent a Chinese tea bowl back to China to be repaired. He was so appalled when the bowl came back with ugly metal staples that surrounding craftsmen were inspired to find a more aesthetically pleasing solution.

The resulting repaired bowls were so beautiful — and became so coveted — that it is said a collector or two went so far as to deliberately break precious tea bowls so they could be repaired with kintsugi, thereby increasing their value. Even today, an object repaired skillfully with kintsugi is often worth more than one without.

In modern-day Japan, the tradition is still very much alive, and residents can take their treasured broken objects to a local expert to have them repaired. The painstaking process uses urushi (lacquer) as both glue and infill to hold the broken joints together and fill missing pieces. Urushi, the oldest form of paint — used for thousands of years — is made from the sap of the urushi tree and is toxic (causing skin irritation in most people) until dried, when it transforms into a luminous and durable substance: Hard yet flexible and delightfully soft to the touch. Urushi is clear until mixed with pigment, and has a sticky texture.

At a certain point in the drying process of the final layer, the repairs are dusted with powdered gold, silver or platinum, which is then brushed and polished to bond permanently with the lacquer. Not only is the powdered metal carefully chosen to

complement the piece — and there are many different shades of gold — the color of the underlying urushi itself is also selected so that it remains beautiful even when the metal wears away with age and use.

You may think that only valuable antique and artist-made objects are repaired with kintsugi, but that is not the case. Everyone has a favorite teacup or coffee mug that has sentimental value, making it priceless. They are just as worthy of kintsugi. Taking care of ones’ belongings saves them from landfills, and preserves the creativity, skill and knowledge of the artisans who created them.

Dropping a beautiful plate or bowl is a tragedy, leading to tears, especially in the case of an antique, for it is a sad and sobering thought that it is our clumsiness that led to the end of something that had survived for hundreds of years. But if you learn about kintsugi, it is an opportunity for healing.

The process itself is restorative and calming, yet exciting: Especially the initial step of fitting the broken pieces together, like a 3D jigsaw puzzle. Sanding and polishing the repairs and applying the lacquer is a lesson in patience and being in the moment. But the biggest reward comes when testing the integrity of the pottery by tapping a finished piece and listening for the sound. A successful repair produces a high, melodic ring — just as it once had — whereas a bad or incomplete repair has a dull and muffled sound.

Even more than the beauty of the shimmering, delicate veins covering old wounds, this pure, clean sound is proof the pottery is again alive. It sings, reborn to live another hundred years.