Week 22: Kintsugi

Kintsugi, according to Wikipedia, is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of

breakage with lacquer that has been dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. As a philosophy it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise. It’s the opposite of the current trend in which everything has to be perfect. Of course, I was naturally intrigued by this.

For the workshop, we didn’t need to bring anything, unless we already had broken objects. Upon arrival, at everyone’s table was a bowl in one piece. The first thing we had to do was break the bowl! It required an explanation on how to best break it, and afterwards, how to piece the bowl back together. We had to glue it piece by piece back together, giving the glue sufficient time to dry. In fact, the time spent waiting for the glue to dry provided some nice moments of zen. To be honest, I liked the end result more than when it was still perfectly in one piece.

Perfectly imperfect, as it said on the goodie bag, something to embrace for everyday life!

The workshop was given near Antwerp by the company Chiyu. This is the link to their website (Dutch only):

https://www.chiyu-kintsugi.com/