Kintsugi

How did you feel the last time a coffee mug slipped from your hands and shattered on your kitchen floor? Probably some combination of surprise and annoyance. If it was an heirloom or a sentimental piece, you may have even felt supremely guilty as you swept up the shards.

In Japan, instead of tossing these pieces in the trash, some craftsmen practice the 500-year-old art of kintsugi, or “golden joinery,” which is a method of restoring a broken piece with a lacquer that is mixed with gold, silver, or platinum.

Kyoto-based Muneaki Shimode, a kintsugi craftsman explains that in Japanese culture, “it’s very important that we understand the spiritual backgrounds or the history behind… the material.” This is interwoven with the philosophy of wabi-sabi, which means “to find beauties in broken things or old things,” Shimode explains.

While the general Western consensus on broken objects is that they have lost their value, practitioners and admirers of kintsugi believe that never ending consumerism is not a spiritually rewarding experience.

The kintsugi method conveys a philosophy not of replacement, but of awe, reverence, and restoration. The gold-filled cracks of a once-broken item are a testament to its history. Shimode points out that “The importance in kintsugi is not the physical appearance, it is… the beauty and the importance [that] stays in the one who is looking at the dish.”

Non-Japanese makers may not realize it, but we practice this philosophy when we see a broken object’s potential, when we upcycle, when we repurpose, when we reincarnate an object that would otherwise likely be thrown away.

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A few snippets from from Kris Puckett - www.krispuckett.com

Kintsugi happens to be a beautiful description of what it means to be human. We are broken vessels in need of repair. We all have our scars, don’t we? Some are physical, tangible, reminders of pain. Most are invisible wounds that healed with a mangled mixture of efficacy.

We all have our scars. We carry them around and we try to minimize their visibility. I want to reframe that. Our scars have the potential to be something incredible.  

Restoration and healing becomes the gilded glue that transforms our wounds and scars from the hidden to the magnificent.

Our wounds, if we let them, have the power to transform us into something beautiful. All of our faults, failures, and pain have the power to shape us into people who have deep empathy for others. Through healing and transformation, we become a stunning whole vessel of life, and beauty, and meaning. Our scars reflect light, rather than absorb it.

We become a living kintsugi.