Kintsugi (金継ぎ): The Golden Joinery
Translated poetically as ‘golden repair’ Kintsukurai, or ‘golden journey’ Kintsugi, is the Japanese art of fixing broken pottery, which became the common practice of restoration by the 17th century.
The kintsugi technique may have been invented around the fifteenth century, under the rule of Ashikaga Yoshimasa, the eighth shogun of the Ashikaga shogunate. This seems plausible because the invention of kintsugi is set in a very fruitful era for art in Japan. Under Yoshimasa’s rule, the city saw the development of the Higashiyama Bunka cultural movement that was heavily influenced by Zen Buddhism; the start of the tea ceremony Sado or the Way of Tea; the tradition of Ikebana called Kado or Way of Flowere; the Noh theater; and the Chinese style of ink painting.
The repair of the broken pottery is achieved by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum, a method similar to the maki-e (蒔絵) technique, which was used for decoration purposes on pottery. The glue traditionally used to bring the pieces together is the urushi lacquer, which is being sourced for thousands of years from the Rhus verniciflua plant.
Once the repairs are completed, beautiful seams of gold and silver glint in the conspicuous cracks of the ceramic wares. 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.
Kintsugi does not disguise the breakage but, philosophically, treats the breakage and the repair as part of the history of the object. The art of Kintsugi has similarities to the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi, a world view centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. Marks of wear by the use of an object are valued by Japanese aesthetics. The repair marks are highlighted, proof of an event in the object’s lifetime, and the object is allowed to continue its existence.
Kintsugi is comprised of three predominant styles: the crack; the piece-method; and the joint-call. In each case the pottery is repaired by a gold, silver, or platinum-dusted epoxy; however the finished results and the techniques used vary.
The most common method of repair is the crack approach where objects are mended with a minimal of lacquer. This method culminates in shining veins of precious metal, which defines the art form. Works restored with the piece-method feature replacement fragments made entirely of gilded epoxy. Pottery repaired using the joint-call technique employ similarly-shaped pieces from other broken wares, combining the two aesthetically different works into one unique unified piece.
Images are reblogged from kintsugi artisan Joseph Weaver’s site: https://josephweaver.com