Often, we try to repair broken things in such a way as to conceal the repair. The girls advise hand washing dishes rather than putting them in the dishwasher after fixing though. for about a minute or two, but then I remembered about Kintsugi - the Japanese art of repairing broken pots. I first heard about kintsugi, which Wikipedia defines as the Japanese art of fixing broken pottery with a lacquer resin sprinkled with powdered gold, back in February, when Elizabeth over at the iFixit blog ran a piece called Kintsugi: Broken is Better Than New. This repair work was done using a lacquer or resin that was sprinkled with powered gold. The word means golden joinery in Japanese. You can repair all sorts of things, including wood, stone and glass, I have used it on my hand thrown terracotta plant pots, where it looks fab and I’ve even fixed a wooden table leg with it, it’s so lovely once you start you want a touch of gold on everything. Kintsugi is a Japanese technique for repairing broken pottery with seams of gold. Kintsugi, also known as kintsukuroi, means golden repair and is a Japanese technique/art in which damaged ceramics are repaired with lacquer that is. It really is dead easy to do and SO glamorous fixing things with gold glue. They have no UK stockist currently but are looking (they are interested in stylish independents, if any are reading). I picked up a kit in Amsterdam recently, but the girls sell them through their Humade site, just drop them an email, the kits are 24 euros.
This beautiful traditional Japanese art style brings together the.
Kintsugi (or also known as kintsukoroi) is the art of repairing broken objects, mainly ceramics, with liquid gold or lacquer dusted with powdered gold. They were inspired by the work of Dutch based Platform21’s manifesto ‘Stop Recycling, Start Repairing’ (a blog post all on its own I think, but I digress) and invented the new kentsugi repair kit in response. Even Japanese beginners can easily dissect the word kin meaning gold and tsugi literally translated to repair. The sisters, who founded Humade together told us ‘By messy mending you emphasis the marks and scars of a product giving it a new perspective and beauty while offering it longevity”. Admittedly they do it beautifully, but it’s like a bit of darning on a sock, sometimes things look more interesting with some mending.īy coincidence I discovered that two dutch sisters Lotte Dekker and Gieke van Lon had invented a New Kintsugi Repair Kit (video above) which allows us to fix modern pottery in the same way, meaning all is now not lost when your favourite plate hits the floor with a crash. The Japanese have come to cherish the imperfection of a broken pot fixed this way, seeing it as a creative addition to the pot’s life story. They invented kintsugi, where pots are fixed with gold dusted glue. According to Lakeside Pottery: Kintsugi is said to have originated in the 15th century when a Japanese shogun broke a favorite tea bowl and sent it back to China to be fixed. If a piece is broken, say a favorite teacup, rather than being. The process dates from the mid 15th century, when one emperor decided the process of fixing valuable broken pots with those metal staples needed a more glamorous make over, so he instructed his craftsmen to come up with a more beautiful alternative. Kintsugi uses lacquer resin mixed with powdered gold, silver, platinum, copper or bronze, resulting into something more beautiful than the original. Kintsugi is a Japanese word meaning to repair with gold, and is normally applied to pottery. Kin in Kintsugi means gold as the broken. Traditional kintsugi uses urushi lacquer (derived from the sap of a Chinese lacquer tree) to repair broken. However, this form of art teaches people that broken things are not objects to hide but to display with pride. This is a prominent theme in the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi, which is all about embracing imperfections. Typically for such an artistic people, the Japanese have a rather beautiful appreciation of repairing broken things, when I was there in November I learnt about kintsugi, which is the art of fixing of broken pottery with gold glue, sort of make-do-and-mend-with-style. The idea behind kintsugi is to highlightrather than hidean objects flaws, making them beautiful instead of unsightly.
This could be the year we all look a bit more seriously at fixing stuff rather than throwing things away and buying new. New Kintsugi, gold repair from Humade on Vimeo.