TOKYO -- "The wound is the place where the light enters you." These words of the 13th century Persian poet Rumi sang in my head as I examined a simple, ceramic bowl in a tiny cafe in a western suburb of Tokyo. The bowl had been elevated to a luminous, compelling objet d'art, by the gold-filled cobweb of cracks snaking across it.
Light had indeed entered this bowl along the lines where it had once shattered, thanks to the particular Japanese art of repairing ceramics called kintsugi. The technique uses the sap of the urushi tree, a powerful natural adhesive, mixed with powdered gold.
Unlike other methods of repair like welding or gluing, kintsugi's power lies in its refusal to disguise the brokenness of an object. It does not aim to make what is broken as good as new, but to use the cracks to transform the object into something different, and arguably even more valuable.
Kunio Nakamura demonstrates the kintsugi technique. (Photo by Pallavi Aiyar)Kintsugi (kin means gold and tsugi means to join) is not just a practical craft, although it undoubtedly prolongs the utility of things. It is also a philosophy that speaks to the human condition. As with much of Japanese aesthetics it is steeped in philosophical concepts rooted in Zen Buddhism.
One of these is wabi-sabi, an aesthetic ideal that emerged in the 15th century as a reaction to the contemporary preference for ornate designs and rich materials.