Kintsugi

The true story of the origin of kintsugi dates back to the 15th century, when Ashikaga Yoshimasa, the 8th Japanese Shogun (1449–1473), is said to have broken a favorite, very rare tea bowl and sent it off to China for repair. When it came back, it had been fixed together with large ugly staples—a method still used in a few remote places and really very unsightly—and so Yoshimasa asked local craftsmen to see if they could repair the bowl in a more attractive way. They used lacquered resin and powdered gold to fill all the cracks, thus highlighting the imperfections and creating a new art form. This embracing and glorifying of faults and visible evidence of aging and everyday usage fits neatly into the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi, which developed during the same century and refers to the appreciation of beauty in nature, asymmetry, roughness, defects, and simplicity.

A third story of the importance of kintsugi to Japanese culture tells how Sen No Rikyu (1522–1599), who is said to have had the most profound influence on Chanoyu, the Japanese way of tea, was once invited to dinner by a man who was very proud of an antique porcelain jar he had purchased from China and expected Rikyu to admire. Rikyu totally ignored it, and later that day, the man smashed the vase in anger and disappointment. Friends arranged for the pieces to be mended by kintsugi, and when Rikyu next visited, he immediately looked at the vase and said, with a smile, “Now it is magnificent.”