The Kintsugi philosophy is the art of mending a broken item by repairing it with gold dust. It aims to remind the wound again by highlighting the broken parts with gold, because wounds are precious.

Kintsugi is the art of combining ceramics such as pots, vases, and glasses with gold from where they are broken. Kintsugi reminds us of the beauty of imperfections, cracks, the enthusiasm of repairing.

 

Legend has it that an emperor in Japan sends him to China when his favorite vase is broken, and when he sees the metal staples, he gets furious. He asks the Japanese craftsmen to find a nicer way. This is how this art, born out of necessity in the 15th century, survives to this day. Kin means gold, and Tsugi means to unite, to patch. The gold between the shards says that even if it is broken or broken, something is still valuable, perhaps even more valuable than it is. In this way, they give broken pieces a new life, perhaps a purpose in life. They give a new life to the imperfect, the broken. They find the beauty in the shards. Kintsugi's goal is not to make the broken vase look like new, but to be beautiful with its flaws, to change your perspective. In other words, it actually means a rebirth.

One of the prominent Kintsugi masters says: “You don't fix the beauty in the broken item. The beauty there is in how you look at that object. We can see the potential in that broken item, we reuse that item that would normally be thrown away, we make it respawn.”

Kintsugi is based on the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi. wabi-sabi means accepting the imperfect, embracing, seeing the beauty in them. When you look at this intertwined philosophy and tradition as a metaphor, we have a lot to learn from both Kintsugi and wabi-sabi.

 

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