Repairing Bowls With Gold

The translation from japanese of kintsugi or kintsukuroi means golden joinery or repair with gold where the gold powder is applied on lacquer some refer to it as kintsugi art with a metaphor of kintsugi life re birth or wabi sabi philosophy this technique transforms broken ceramic or pottery into beautiful.

Repairing bowls with gold.

The philosophy behind the technique is to recognize the history of the object and to visibly incorporate the repair into the new piece instead of disguising it. The meaning of kintsugi kintsukuroi gold repair art. You are not your past. It s more likely that the tradition began in time with the rise of tea bowls vessels used in traditional japanese tea ceremonies which flourished in the 16th century.

Kintsugi 金継ぎ golden joinery also known as kintsukuroi 金繕い golden repair is the japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold silver or platinum a method similar to the maki e technique. In japan broken bowls are repaired with gold. By the 17th century kintsugi has become common practice in japan. Japan broken bowl kintsukuroi.

Kintsugi or kintsukuroi is a japanese method for repairing broken ceramics with a special lacquer mixed with gold silver or platinum. Japanese kintsukuroi chawan. Be proud of your scars. Kintsugi is said to have originated in the 15th century when a japanese shogun broke a favorite tea bowl and sent it back to china to be fixed.

The history of kintsugi. According to lakeside pottery. Sackler gallery it was during this time that a japanese warrior infamously purchased broke and repaired standard tea bowls in order to make a profit that seems to indicate that by the beginning of the 17th century kintsugi was a. This inspired him to find an elegant way to amend the ceramic and as a result kintsugi was born.

As a philosophy it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object rather than something. According to louise cort the curator of ceramics at the freer gallery of art and arthur m. Kintsugi uses lacquer resin mixed with powdered gold silver platinum copper or bronze resulting into something more beautiful than the original. Jul 7 2020 the japanese art of repairing with gold to create a perfectly imperfect piece of beauty.

Through this story cort explained we can infer that gold lacquer repairs weren t yet being performed in the 15th century.