Broken? Add a splash of gold
Thoughts based on next level cool pottery aka the art of Kintsugi
I recently broke a sculpture that was very dear to my husband. It’s a blue man climbing on a wall, with frog palms in place of its hands and feet. It’s made of clay and has a shiny blue coating. It’s limited edition, and a gift from his mother. It’s also the only piece of “art” we have in the house.
You can imagine how devastated I felt when I saw it broken into pieces. He had had that sculpture for the last 10 years. It started its life in Canary Wharf, then moved with us to Baker Street, Wapping and now Bethnal Green, for most of the last 7 years. And after surviving 3 moves, here it was, on the floor, with one arm and one leg gone. With a bit of superglue, a bit of blue nail varnish, and a lot of love, I managed to put it back together. The blue man now stands again on the wall, with its quite visible scar on the left leg, and less visible scars in the rest of its body.
Repairing the blue man was the first obvious thing that came to mind. He is unique after all. Yet it is interesting to notice how little we usually repair stuff. Mostly because repairing is sometimes more expensive than buying new, often because there is probably a newer, improved version of what is broken that has now been released and we can easily procure. There is one thing we can’t replace so easily though: ourselves. All we got is us. So when we’re broken, we do take the time and effort to repair ourselves.
I came across this Japanese art called Kintsugi.
Now take a look at this bowl. How cool is it? Beats your average black bowl, doesn’t it? (its price tag too btw, but that’s besides the point). Apparently, the art of Kintsugi came about in the 15th century when a Japanese man sent back to China some ceramic that had been broken in transport, and it came back fixed with ugly pieces of metal. Some Japanese craftsmen thought “there must be a better way” and tadaaaaa, Kintsugi was born. The technique consists of using gold dust and resin to attach the broken pieces together. The result is quite awesome, you frankly wish you could break all your pottery and make it look like that, don’t you? (I do). Literally, the wounds are repaired, emphasized, beautified. The wounds make the whole bowl way more awesome than it was before it was broken. What’s more, the bowl is now truly unique. There is not one like this one.
What a metaphor my friends.
According to Wikipedia, Kintsugi is aligned with the philosophy of “wabi-wasi” — the idea that aesthetics lies in imperfection and that beauty is “imperfect, impermanent, incomplete”. To go further, the art of Kintsugi embraces the fact it’s the wear and tear of an object that make it beautiful (think leather jacket). Cracks and repairs are part of the life of an object, they are not the end of it.
I won’t indulge in cringe-worthy stuff like “embrace your imperfections” nor “broken is beautiful” — cause you are better than that. I got to say though, there is something nice to think about… I would like to think that, like that bowl, we are all a bit prettier because of our cracks and how we fixed them — well, here it is after all, I hope it made you cringe.
