Kintsugi

Kintsugi (Japanese: 金継ぎ, lit. ‘golden joinery’), also known as kintsukuroi (金繕い, “golden repair”), is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with urushi lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. The method is similar to the maki-e technique.

It can be seen as a metaphor for embracing your flaws and imperfections. There is beauty in out brokenness. The practice of repairing broken objects and acknowledging their history rather than discarding them resonates with the Buddhist principle of treating everything with respect and concern with wastefulness.

The exact origins of kintsugi are not known, however, historians date the start of the practice to the Muromachi period (1336–1573 CE). In the 16th century CE the repair technique appears to have already been in common use.