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Kintsugi
by Stefano Carnazzi
[Listen to Audio!]
 When a bowl, teapot or precious vase falls and breaks into a thousand pieces, we throw them away angrily and regretfully. Yet there is an alternative, a Japanese practice that highlights and enhances the breaks thus adding value to the broken object. It’s called kintsugi (éç¶ã), or kintsukuroi (éç¹ã), literally golden (“kin”) and repair (“tsugi”).
This traditional Japanese art uses a precious metal – liquid gold, liquid silver or lacquer dusted with powdered gold – to bring together the pieces of a broken pottery item and at the same time enhance the breaks. The technique consists in joining fragments and giving them a new, more refined aspect. 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.
With this technique it’s possible to create true and always different works of art, each with its own story and beauty, thanks to the unique cracks formed when the object breaks, as if they were wounds that leave different marks on each of us. …
Even today, it may take up to a month to repair the largest and most refined pieces of ceramics with the kintsugi technique, given the different steps and the drying time required.
The kintsugi technique suggests many things. We shouldn’t throw away broken objects. When an object breaks, it doesn’t mean that it is no more useful. Its breakages can become valuable. We should try to repair things because sometimes in doing so we obtain more valuable objects.
This is the essence of resilience. Each of us should look for a way to cope with traumatic events in a positive way, learn from negative experiences, take the best from them and convince ourselves that exactly these experiences make each person unique, precious.
About the Author: Originally excerpted from here.
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Kintsugi
What does kintsugi suggest to you? Can you share a personal story of a time you saw beauty in the scar from a healed negative experience? What helps you see your life’s scars, not as a disturbance of its beauty, but an integral part of it? |
| Jagdish P Dave wrote: We all break precious items and we may feel anger, hurt, regret and despair. We create scars in us and in others. How do we deal with the broken parts of ourselves? Do we boil with anger or accept the… |
| David Doane wrote: Kintsugisuggests to me that damage isn’t the end, and a valuable new reintegration and new beginning is possible. I was cheated out of significant money by an employer years ago. The beauty in the… |
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