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Celebrate your Broken Pieces - Golden Repair - The Art of Kintsugi

Ruth-Anne Ford

I have a bread bowl I purchased at an estate sale about 10 years ago. I read about the estate sale on Craigslist and waited outside with my toddler for our turn to go in alongside more experienced collectors. I wasn't looking for anything in particular, just excited to get out of the house and find treasures with the rest of the "pickers." I found a large vintage bread bowl that I loved. 

Fast forward a few years - add some rowdy boys + balls and now we have a broken bowl.

I have heard of the wonderful art of Kintsugi - which Wikapedia describes as:

Originating from the the 17th century, Kintsugi (金継ぎ, "golden joinery"), also known as kintsukuroi (金繕い, "golden repair"), is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum, a method similar to the maki-e technique. Here is an example: 

The traditional way is to use lacquer, but you can use any type of adhesive and paint with gold dust or draw over the glue line with a gold leaf pen. The later is the technique I used.

I used a strong wood glue, allowed it to dry and then topped it with the gold leaf pen.


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1 comment

  • very cool

    Julio

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