Kintsugi

金継ぎ / 15th century– / Technique / Vessel and Craft Techniques

Kintsugi is the Japanese craft of repairing broken ceramics with urushi lacquer and gold or silver, so the mend is shown rather than hidden. The Getty vocabulary files it under repairing, as a restorative process rather than a style. The break decides where the metal lines run, so one vessel can never produce the same drawing twice.

Thin gold or silver lines that follow the break exactly / Line width that varies, widening into filled areas where a chip was lost / A trace of dark lacquer showing at the edge of the metal / Metal lines crossing the vessel's original painted decoration without regard for it

Kintsugi — Ko-Karatsu tea bowl repaired with kintsugi — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0 — Ko-Karatsu tea bowl repaired with kintsugi — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0 ／ Goryeo celadon ewer repaired with kintsugi, c. 1100–1150 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0 UK ／ Teapot lid repaired with kintsugi — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0

Kintsugi — Goryeo celadon ewer repaired with kintsugi, c. 1100–1150 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0 UK — Ko-Karatsu tea bowl repaired with kintsugi — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0 ／ Goryeo celadon ewer repaired with kintsugi, c. 1100–1150 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0 UK ／ Teapot lid repaired with kintsugi — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0

Dictionary entry

Best used for: Building a display where broken prototypes or stock are shown mended instead of discarded · Leaving a visible record of repair or revision on a product or a screen
Type: Add no lettering, and let the metal lines share the surface with whatever marks the vessel already carries.
Composition: The break dictates the lines, so fit the fragments first and then decide how much metal each seam takes.
Material: Urushi lacquer joins and hardens the pieces, then gold or silver powder is laid over the seam.
Caution: Designing the gold lines before anything breaks places them where no stress runs, and the piece looks patterned rather than mended.
Further study: where the Getty places kintsugi, registered as a repairing process / the situations in which the alternative name kintsukuroi is used / the order of joining with urushi lacquer and then sprinkling the gold powder

Related entries

Cite this entry

The dictionary is meant to be linked to. Take whichever form fits where you are writing.

Link: https://indexstyle.org/styles/kintsugi
Markdown: [Kintsugi — IndexStyle](https://indexstyle.org/styles/kintsugi)
HTML: <a href="https://indexstyle.org/styles/kintsugi">Kintsugi — IndexStyle</a>

Back to index position