In Japan, a broken bowl can be mended with gold and become more precious.
Kintsugi, 'golden joinery', repairs cracked pottery with lacquer dusted with powdered gold, so the break shines instead of hiding. Collectors loved it so much that some were accused of smashing valuable pots on purpose, just to have them mended this way.
Kintsugi is the Japanese art of rejoining broken ceramics with urushi, a lacquer made from tree sap, mixed with or dusted in powdered gold, silver or platinum. The seams are not disguised. They become golden rivers across the surface, and the object carries its accident as part of its story.
One origin story, not certain, involves the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa in the late 15th century. He is said to have sent a damaged Chinese tea bowl back to China for repair, and it came back held together with crude metal staples. That may have pushed Japanese craftsmen to find a more beautiful solution. The practice became closely tied to the tea ceremony, and was also applied to pieces from China, Korea and Vietnam.
The craft is slow. Menders use several recipes of urushi, including one bulked out with wheat flour and another with clay, and the lacquer only cures in warmth and high humidity. Traditionally, a mended piece rests in a humid cupboard called a furo, 'bath', for anywhere from two days to two weeks. Repairs range from filling a simple crack to replacing a lost chunk entirely with gold, or patching in a fragment from a different pot.
Its philosophy links to wabi-sabi, the acceptance of imperfection, and to mushin, a calm non-attachment to change. Wear and damage are treated as events in an object's life rather than the end of its usefulness. That idea has spread well beyond pottery: museums including the Met and the Smithsonian's Freer Gallery have exhibited kintsugi, and contemporary artists have used it in textiles, sculpture and even a basketball court.
Source: Wikipedia — Kintsugi · Text summarised from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
