Kintugi the art of precious scars
We all grow up dreaming about a perfect life: deeply fulfilling work, harmonious family life, stimulating friendship. But life has the habit of giving us shots so we sometimes look at pieces of our broken dreams . It’s difficult to go ahead because of this concept of perfection and of no-return. The sense of powerlessness is due to the idea that the error can not be fixed. It is so difficult to face this moment of disillusion that we might turn around by drawing to Japanese philosophy; This concept was developed by Zen Masters, It’s about damaged pottery. Beloved damaged pottery used during the tea cerimony coudn’t simply thrown away because they still loved them and also because these pottery still had a lot of stories to tell. So they developed a process to repair broken pottery.
Embracing the damage, the process
Kintsugi. We all know this process of repairing ceramic as Kintsugi that literally means join with gold.
Laquer Urushi. Prepare a glue with laquer Urushi and flour in order to fix together broken pieces. It’s important to take care of the glue, it has to be dense without lamps.
Fixing together . When the glue is ready you carefully stick the pieces. Than you have to place the ceramic into a paper box named Muro, over some chinese chopsticks with a wet cloth for a week or ten days. (It depends on the damage)
Sanding. After a week you might take the ceramic out of the box, sand the repaired part and cover with red urushi laquer. Than you have to place the ceramic into the Muro, over some chinese chopsticks with a wet cloth for another hour.
Gilding. Now you might cover the red urushi with expensive and precious golden powder.
Here a beautiful video about How to do Kintsugi step by step.
Resilience
There is no attempt to hide the damage. The point is showing the fault lines that are beautiful and strong. The golden lines bring to light breaks that have a value on their own.
Beauty of imperfection
It could be a beautiful hopeful Christmas present.
I am an Artist, located in Italy, the country of Art and Dolce Vita, in love with wabi sabi ceramics. I am specialized in art laboratories, helping people to meet the creative side of life, and helping creative entrepreneurs and companies with branding through my artworks with a dash of clean style to capture the harmony of life. I also work in Hospitals with clay therapy laboratory for children. This blog is my Artistic Salad, filled with creativity, beauty, joie de vivre, passion and tools for creative minds.
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