Kintsugi

Kintsugi. Golden joinery.

In the late fifteenth century the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa sent a broken tea bowl to China to be mended. It returned held together with metal staples. He found it ugly and asked his own craftsmen for something better.

What they made did not conceal the break. It traced it in gold.

The practice became so admired that collectors were later accused of breaking fine pottery deliberately, simply to have it repaired.

THE SESSION

Two hours. A small table. A broken vessel, and the slow work of making it whole in a way that does not pretend it was ever unbroken.

You will align the fracture, bond it, and draw the seam until the crack reads as a deliberate line of gold. The work is quiet and exacting. Most people stop talking about twenty minutes in.

BRING SOMETHING BROKEN

The bowl knocked from a shelf. The cup from someone who mattered. Ceramic or porcelain, no larger than fifteen centimetres, in two or three clean pieces.

If you have nothing to bring, a vessel will be waiting.

ON MATERIALS

We teach modern kintsugi. Resin and metallic finish, not urushi lacquer and powdered gold.

Traditional urushi cures across weeks and months. It cannot honestly be taught in an evening and we will not pretend otherwise. What we teach gives you the technique, the discipline and the finished object.

What it does not give you is a food safe repair. Your piece belongs on a shelf, not on a table.

INCLUDED

Vessel, materials, tools, and instruction throughout.

Approximately two to two and a half hours. No experience necessary. Wear something you do not mind marking.