Kintsugi, whose meaning in Japanese is "gold carpentry" or Kintsukuroi which means "gold repair", is a technique of Japanese origin that seeks to restore the original state of a fractured object using resin varnish dusted or mixed with dust. gold, silver or platinum.
The approach of this technique is based on the fact that breaks and repairs are part of the intrinsic history of each object, and that instead of hiding (or discarding the object), they must be shown and also beautify it, highlighting its transformation and its history.
The origin of the kintsugi dates back to the late 15th century when the shogun, Ashikaga Yoshimasa, sent two of his favorite tea bowls to China for repair. They repaired the bowls, but they did it with some metal staples. As the result was not to his liking, he sought out Japanese artisans to improve the restoration, thus giving life to a new way of repairing ceramics, which soon became art.
The technique consists of joining the pieces using Urushi lacquer to later be sprinkled with gold, silver or platinum dust.
In this way, we can give a 2nd life to objects that we initially considered lost and the only possibility we thought we had was to discard them. Let's learn to discover the beauty of blemishes and to live with them.
NOTE:
This post, which may seem a bit outside the theme of coffee, is the result of a recent post on Instagram in which we talked about choosing our favorite mugs / mugs and how, regardless of whether they are beautiful or not, they are special for us for different reasons.
The point is that for more than 15 years I had a favorite mug, which only I used. I remembered the day the handle broke after being hit hard and how I kept using it no matter how uncomfortable it was to hold for quite some time. And due to an association of ideas, all this led me to think about the kintsugi technique and hence the reason for writing this post.
We leave you the following video developed by ROANOKE in which we are taught what Kintsugi consists of and how the art of restoring broken ceramic pieces is carried out. There is no doubt that we can speak of authentic works of art !!
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