the art of kintsugi

8/12/2019 The Art of KinTsugi

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Daniel Medvedov

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The Art ofK intsugi

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• Madrid2015



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I remember a story of a broken vase that is mended with gold. The moral is that - "after fixing a

broken thing, it will show perfection and beauty much more than before, because it hasexperienced something and it has endured, it has learned and it has fought, it has lived once

again.“

Bullshit - Nonsense . . .•

Pride, honor and glory, the three most precious things to a man are next to nothing in the eyes ofthe universe. Many ones I know think of gold as the tangible image of these three. There is a kind

of a gold that it is not of that world.

AURUM NOSTRUM NON EST AURUM VULGUI

One day my wife comes to me with a cup I use every morning to drink cofee and said: -"Darling,your coffee cup fell, it's broken."

- “I see . . .” – said I.I do not share such philosophy that nothing is ever broken, and when I see how they collect with

such great care the shattered pieces and try to put them in place again I just detest it andremembers me the famous Humpty-Dumpty stanza.

•Humpty Dumpty is a character in a Mother Goose nursery rhyme, from England. He is dearly

depicted as an anthropomorphic or, let’s said “a personified egg”.The most common modern text is:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king's horses and all the king's men

Could not put Humpty together again.

Rebuild a broken house is the most absurd deal I ever heard. The original rhyme, from 1810, doesnot mention that Humpty Dumpty is an egg. In fact, the rhyme is a riddle in English slang of the

time. Humpty Dumpty was used to designate a goofy little person.The key to the puzzle was the fact that you not need to be necessarily a clumsy person to suffer

such irreparable harm from a fall, at least not as much as an egg would suffer, indeed.

Since the answer is very well known, the rhyme is no longer used as a riddle. But we do not takecare in our everyday life of the warning that each broken heart may not and has not to be fixed

again by any means, because it is even more delicate as a broken egg.

Red Heart–Gray Heart sate on a wall, Red Heart–Gray Heart had a great fall;

Threescore men and threescore women more,Can not place Gray Heart as it was before.

Blue-Heart Gray-Heart sat on a wall,Blue-Heart Gray-Heart suffered a great fall.



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Even sixty men, sixty-four or more men Never could fix Gray-Heart together again.

Humpty Dumpty and “Alice in Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There”. Illustration by John Tenniel.



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Humpty Dumpty has been taken up in many later artistic works. The most famous is perhaps hisappearance in “Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There”, published in 1871 by

Lewis Carroll. In Spanish, he is known as stilt Pancho.

In the book of Caroll, Humpty Dumpty discusses semantics matters and pragmatism with Alicia,

and he explains, in his own way, the meaning of the strange words of the poem " Jabberwocky ".The rhyme about Humpty Dumpty is taken as the purest incarnation of the condition of humanheart.

Let’s say that it was once upon a time an autumn morning when leaves are falling down from the branches of the trees, and preparing themselves for the coming winter.

The vase used as a cup of tea was important to me. There would be days when I would just lookand stare at the rustic beauty of the the rude cup, with its blue-gray shimmering color. There was

a time when I would take it in my hand and sit and watch the beauty of love collected under therude appearance of that object.

Now the shelter of my simplicity was shattered. The vase fell by natural fall, such as mayhappend with everything else in life, be broken, be shattered by the intervention of strange and

unknowable forces. I understand this, and I do not think that it can be replaced, but many otherthink that everything can be fixed.

If you fix it, it will no longer look as it was before, will look not only damaged or cracked, but thesame energy with which was filled and it had before is now gone away, forever. Just buy a new

one and forget it.Damaged and broken traces taught me that all wounds and suffering show who we are, show

history and mature growth, it shows perhaps that we understood something of life, it shows may be that we understood nothing.



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The art of Kintsugi is not to fix broken things with gold, but to accept broken marks as a trace ofmemory, a kind of a ANAMNESIS process, after creating a new and reborn alchemical object,

similar but not identical to the previous one.



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Some owners of precious tea-cups deliberately were smashing such valuable pottery in order to be

repaired with the gold technique of kintsugi, which it seems very weird to me.



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Kintsugi belongs to Wabi-Sabi, an aesthetic vision of the secret value of the rude and imperfectobjects: the old marks of wear due to much handling by the use of an object over time and space,

is seen a a deep reason for keeping an object in great esteem even after it has broken, as a justification of the subtle energy accumulated in it and so, the art of kintsugi highlights the cracks

and repairs as an event in the life of an object rather than allowing a dismiss of its service and the

end of its use at the time of its damage, patina or breakage.

“Patina” is known as a kind of a green or brown film on the surface of bronze or similar metals,

produced by oxidation over a long period. In the eyes of much individuals many bronzes have to be and have been overcleaned, their original patina removed and artificially replaced, a clear kitch

approach of the old.Most of the scratchy lines and squiggles visible on old objects are the green patina of oxidized

bronze, not a part of the original coin as cast.Some heads found in very ancient tombs wear masks of applied gold-leaf, and it gleams strangely

over the green patina of the ancient bronze. A bright copper skin will gradually oxidize to a green patina that will blend into surrounding nature as a quite curious camouflage. A patina is a gloss or

sheen on wooden furniture produced by age and polishing.

A dining table will acquire a warm patina with age and on a river, figurative plankton may add agolden patina to the shallow, slowly moving water.

The patina is an impression or appearance of something as saying that “he carries the patina of oldmoney and good breeding”.

Kintsugi is related to the Japanese philosophy of "no mind" – mushin - or non- attachment and theacceptance of change and destiny as existential aspects of human life. It is nice to show with

delicacy the possible dammage and the repair in itself as a secret chance to remember the pastexperience, a physical expression of the spiritual history of the item which carries a deep meaning

and connotations of existing within the moment, it tells us something about non-attachment andequanimity and balance amid thousand changing conditions of everyday life.

This are the vicissitudes of our existence over time, inexorable to all humans and breaks, knocks,

shattering to which ceramic ware is subject are similar to breaks, knocks, and shattering of humanheart. This is a poignant cry of our human existence, and in Japan it is called “mono no aware”,

the gracious and subtle sensitivity, or perhaps a shabby metaphor of the truth.

Traditionally, there are different types of Kintsugi:• Crack - the use of gold dust and resin or lacquer to attach and put together broken pieces with

no, or minimal, overlap or fill-in from missing pieces• Piece Method - when a replacement ceramic fragment is not available and the entirety of the

addition is gold or gold/lacquer compound • Joint Call where a similarly shaped but non-matching fragment is used to replace a missing

piece from the original vessel creating a patchwork effect

The energy of the entire object loose power or it is totally lost when some artisans use “staplerepair” - a similar technique used to repair broken ceramics: small holes are drilled on both sides

of a crack and then metal staples are bent in order to hold the pieces together. Staple repair wasused in China, England, and Russia as a repair technique for valuable pieces.



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Kintsugi is a method to highlight, to show in a new light, or to emphasize what we call“imperfections”, considering that mends and seams are just accents towards an unseen detail to

celebrate aesthetical focuss on the missing part, rather than considering it as an absence or amissing fault. There is an idea of a minimal loss, and repair is seen as a process of rebirth, as it is

in alchemy.

I was always impessed of the distaste showed by family members, or friends when it occurs toyou to leave some circular mark on their tables with your cup of red wine or cofee. They do not

consider that as a trace of memory staying there to remind them that you still exist, or that youwere there a day, a shiny or a rainy day of the past.

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the art of kintsugi

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