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A32 FEATURE
Friday 8 November 2019
Kintsugi: Broken pottery becomes more beautiful, precious

By LINDA LOMBARDI a tiny bit of artistic license:
Associated Press When you paint the fine
If you search online for crack that extends from
“kintsugi,” most of what the bottom of the chip,
you’ll find in English is self- no one’s going to know if
help advice that uses this you make it a little longer
Japanese craft as a jump- than it really was. A more
ing-off point. The idea of experienced craftsperson
repairing broken pottery in can also add designs to
a way that makes it more flat areas; Kuge showed us
beautiful than it was before examples covered with tiny
is apparently an irresistible dots and with traditional
metaphor for recovering patterns of nested half-cir-
from life’s trials and tribula- cles.
tions. Finally, with a larger brush,
When I tried kintsugi for my- we took more of the dry
self at a workshop in Tokyo powder and dusted it onto
recently, I couldn’t help everything we’d just paint-
wondering how many of ed. At first, we needed to
those writers based their be careful not to touch the
simile on hands-on experi- wet surface, but once it
ence. The craft was a lot was covered with powder,
more tedious than I’d ex- it was safe to brush off the
pected — but maybe that extra.
made the metaphor all the Although this didn’t take
more true? the months of waiting that
The usual goal when repair- This Nov. 11, 2018 photo shows an example of Kintsugi at the Kuge Crafts workshop in Tokyo. it did in earlier centuries, we
ing something is to make Associated Press still were not quite done: Af-
the fix unnoticeable, restor- made of copper and brass toxic as the old-fashioned per so fine you can’t feel ter two days we’d need to
ing an object as closely as — but, in addition, the an- materials, which can cause any roughness with your fin- wash the extra gold pow-
possible to its original ap- cient method took literally allergic reactions. gertip. der off with soapy water
pearance. Kintsugi takes months to complete. The workshop had many At this point, the piece and a sponge, and then
the opposite approach: Kuge demonstrated the old beautiful examples on dis- would normally be left to wait two weeks for the
Chips and cracks are out- technique by mixing a little play of pottery broken into dry overnight, but so the piece to dry completely.
lined and filled in with gold, sticky plant resin with clay several pieces and reas- workshop could be finished If you want to try kintsugi,
creating a new design and powder, and then dripping sembled with lines of gold, in one afternoon, Kuge ef- you can buy Japanese-
adding a material that a drop of it onto a chip on as well as some with deco- fected a little time-travel made kits with all the ma-
looks precious. the lip of a cup. That was it rative additions incorporat- with the use of a hair dryer. terials. These will cost over
The craft is said to go back for today: Now, you’d have ed, like pieces of sea glass. Once the piece cooled off, $100 if you wait to go home
to the 15th century, and I to wait a month for that thin We, however, started small, finally we got to what we to the U.S. and order them
was disappointed at first layer to dry, then repeat each choosing a cup that came for: the gold. online, but even if you’re
to learn from instructor Yo- the process until enough was intact except for a In a tiny tray, the gold shopping in Japan they’re
shiko Kuge that we would layers had been built up to small chip on its rim. powder (made of brass pricier than buying the
not be using traditional fill the gap. We each filled in the chip and copper) is mixed with components separately.
materials. The reasons soon Instead, we would use an with a lump of putty that a resin; this is made from Kuge provides students
became obvious, though. epoxy putty that dries in extended beyond the gap cashew nuts and is appar- with a shopping list (with
Of course it makes sense a few minutes — an obvi- in all directions. After the ently less toxic than the tra- photos, for the Japanese-
that beginners wouldn’t be ous improvement as far as putty dried, the next step ditional kind. We dipped a impaired).
using real gold — the usual speed, especially for a two- was filing down the lump fine-tipped brush into some The shopping list was a nice
replacement is a powder hour class. It’s also not as using a metal file that’s flat thinner and then into the gesture, but for my part,
on one side and curved on gold mixture and used it to what I learned about this
the other — flat for the out- first outline our chip, then fill craft is that I’m going to
side of the cup, curved for it in. (This is harder on the in- leave it to the experts, as
the inside. side of the cup, where it’s least for pottery. As far as
The gold of a finished hard to get a good angle.) the life metaphor, I’ll have
kintsugi piece is textured, so Next we got to indulge in to think on it.q
we students were a bit sur-
prised as we kept showing
our pieces to the instructors
and being told we weren’t
done yet. Turns out the tex-
ture is completely due to
the gold added later — we
really needed to file the
filler down till it was com-
pletely level with the origi-
nal surfaces, a process that
took quite some time. Then,
This Nov. 11, 2018 photo taken in Tokyo shows co-instructor Yo- when it looked like it was
shiichiro Kuge checking whether the filler material is filed down finally perfectly smooth, This Nov. 11, 2018 photo shows gold-colored powder and resin
enough to proceed to the next step at the Kuge Crafts workshop we had to make it even being mixed before being brushed onto the repaired area at
in Tokyo. smoother with wet sandpa- the Kuge Crafts workshop in Tokyo.
Associated Press Associated Press