Kintsugi
金継ぎ/keen-TSOO-gee/
The Japanese art of mending broken ceramics with gold-dusted lacquer.
Also known as: golden joinery
Kintsugi ("golden joinery") is the traditional Japanese practice of repairing cracked or broken pottery with urushi lacquer dusted with gold, silver, or platinum powder. Rather than hiding the break, kintsugi celebrates it — the seams glitter and become part of the bowl's aesthetic. In tea ceremony culture, a kintsugi-mended chawan is often considered more valuable than an unbroken one: the visible repair tells the bowl's story. If your daily-use chawan cracks, kintsugi (or simpler epoxy mending) is a real option for keeping it.
In practice
- The repair of broken pottery with lacquer dusted with powdered gold, so the break is highlighted rather than hidden.
- Applied to chawan more than to almost any other object, because tea bowls are used daily, get dropped, and are often too valued to discard.
- A repaired bowl can be considered more interesting than an unbroken one — the repair records the bowl's history rather than erasing it.
- True kintsugi uses urushi lacquer and takes weeks of curing between layers. The kits sold online mostly use epoxy and gold-coloured powder, which looks similar and is not food-safe on a drinking surface.
The common mistake
Drinking from an epoxy-repaired bowl. Craft-kit adhesives are not rated for hot liquid contact. Keep epoxy repairs to display pieces and use real urushi on anything you drink from.
