Kintsugi (金継ぎ)
The Japanese art of Kintsugi is the art of mending precious, broken china with gold. The result is a different item. It will never be the same again and may not be able to perform the original function, but it has a new beauty and a different function. Last year I discovered Kintsugi and had a go at it. Here are the pieces I attempted. In this lies a picture of how our brokenness can be mended. We might never loose our scars, but they can become a source of beauty.
My first attempt was on an old tea set. My work is far from perfect; the photographer has made them look better than they are, but it was a start.
This was a very cheap vase from a well-known Scandinavian home shop, so it wasn’t worth much in the first place, but then it got broken, so was completely worthless. Now, with the broken edges coated with 24c gold leaf, it has a new value and a new function.
This carafe was smashed and some of the fragments were lost. In fixing it, it has not been possible to make it complete; there are gaps and bits are misaligned, but with the gold, that has become part of its beauty!
The turkey plate! This was a family heirloom and carried the Christmas turkey every year since I can remember. Then one fraught Christmas it became cracked. I couldn’t throw it away, so it sat for years on the delft rack until last year when I discovered Kintsugi. I had to make the cracks bigger before I could fill them with gold leaf, but now it’s a treasure again.
Human Kintsugi
I then wondered about using gold leaf on a person to suggest healing. Sarah kindly offered to take this on along with photographer David. Their work is also used in the poem Inside Out.
