Kintsugi

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Fewer, Better Things: The Hidden Wisdom of Objects by Glenn Adamson

big-box store, Biosphere 2, blood diamond, blue-collar work, Buckminster Fuller, carbon footprint, Charles Babbage, crowdsourcing, dematerialisation, dumpster diving, fake news, Ford Model T, haute couture, informal economy, Jacquard loom, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, Kintsugi, Mason jar, post-truth, race to the bottom, tacit knowledge, TED Talk, trade route, VTOL, white flight

., here Jackson, Maggie, here Jackson, Michael, here Jacquard, Joseph Marie, here, here Jacquard loom, here jail crafts, here Japan chanoyu (tea ceremony), here, here kintsugi method, here, here, here, here living national treasures program, here Onta ceramics, here POW camps, here Jefferson, Thomas, here Jews, historical documents of the, here Jiro Dreams of Sushi (film), here Ju/’hoansi hunting sandals, here Kandinsky, Wassily, here, here Kazam! machine, here Keller, Helen, here, here Kennedy, A. L., here kintsugi, here, here, here, here Kirkaldy, David, here, here, here Kirkaldy Testing Museum, here Kirkham, Pat, here knowledge artisanal, here attaining by copying, here creating a body of, here crowdsourcing, here embodied, here generational, in tools, here objects and, here speed of acquisition, here Koestenbaum, Wayne, here Koetsu, Hon’ami, here Kwakiutl, here labor, skilled, here labor force, here Lamu Island, here, here Landis, Mark, here language, haptic metaphors in, here laser cutters, here Leach, Bernard, here learning by doing, here, here, here Lessing, Doris, here Library of Congress, here light-emitting diodes (LEDs), here limestone, here linoleum, here listening, here living national treasures, here, here locale, here localism, here longing, here On Longing (Stewart), here looms, here The Lost Carving (Esterly), here Louvre, here machines cultural emphasis on, here design and construction of, here manufacture by, here Mad Men (TV), here Madonna of the Veil (Botticelli), here Magic Marker, here Mailfert, André, here Make Do and Mend, here maker-material relationship, here making automated forms of, here communities of respect, here consciousness in, here continuum of, here copies, here experiential dimension of, here hands on, being, here immersion in, here learning by doing, here music, here to order, here prototyping, here tools and, here vanishing skills, here manhole covers, here mannequins, here markers, felt-tipped, here marquetry, here Mars, simulating, here, here The Martian (film), here material awareness, here material engagement, trend away from, here material experience, here, here material intelligence defining humans, here emotional intelligence and, here intuitive, example of, here lessening of, here in making, here mass gatherings of, here place-specific, here tactility and, here of tools, here totality of, here touch in applying, here materiality agency vs., here fascinations of, here museums organized around, here philosopher of, here philosophy of, here materials.

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In many cases this will involve replacing the original material with a visual double—tinted epoxy for porcelain, a light-colored wood dyed to match mahogany. This requires tremendous sensitivity to both the original fabric of the object and the replacement material. Not all repairers wish to make their work invisible. The Japanese technique of kintsugi (literally, “golden joining”) is a celebrated example. When a valuable ceramic object has a break or chip, it is filled with clear lacquer mixed with metallic powder. Once this infill has been burnished it gleams brightly, drawing attention to the repair and hence to the life story of the object.

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Because Japanese pottery is so revered for its historical associations, marking a crack in this way can even enhance the appeal and cultural stature of a particular teabowl or jar. The juxtaposition of luxurious gold against humble clay speaks to the unusual situation of these pots, which often originate from anonymous country kilns but are taken up as revered treasures by wealthy aesthetes. In the case of kintsugi, material transposition is not meant to pass unnoticed, but to speak clearly and eloquently.5 The technique of gold repair has become so iconic among designers that many have adapted it using other materials; a reasonable facsimile can be produced with materials from a hobby shop, like rubber cement and gold metallic paint.

Simplicity at Home by Yumiko Sekine

Kintsugi, Mason jar

My mother collects dishes, coordinating them with her table linens to make each meal look festive. And though she must have been sad to see the dishes broken, she would gather the pieces and give them a new life with kintsugi. With this traditional method of repairing ceramics, the broken pieces are joined with urushi lacquer, which is painted with a gold powder paste after it dries. Kintsugi is more than a way to mend a broken dish; it transforms the dish into a piece of art. With the gold line marking the repaired seam, each dish is unique. Kintsugi is a perfect expression of the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, which is about finding beauty in imperfection, particularly the inevitable process of age and decay.

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Chronicle Books LLC 680 Second Street San Francisco, California 94107 www.chroniclebooks.com CONTENTS My Life with Linen 10 Summer 20 Creating a New Home 24 Starting to Fill the Shelves 28 Summer Bed Linens 35 Recycling Old Linen Sheets 42 Setting the Table with Handmade Ceramics 46 Cold Noodles with Two Types of Tempura 54 Okra and Kabocha Tempura 58 Somen 59 Corn and Edamame Kakiage (Mixed Vegetable Tempura) 60 The Art of Kintsugi 64 Autumn 68 A Simple Patchwork 72 Patchwork Linen 80 Creating a Small Oasis 82 Air-Drying Vegetables 88 New Harvest Rice 100 Hand-Carved Wooden Spoon 110 Japanese Bath 118 Lavender Bath Salts 123 Yuzu Bath Salts 123 Handmade Soap 124 Winter 126 Preparing the House for Winter 130 Organizing the Closet 138 Decorating for Christmas 144 Growing Plants from Seeds and Scraps 148 New Year’s Party Foods 154 Cleaning the House for the New Year 162 Making Miso 168 Spring 172 A Capsule Wardrobe 176 Making a Scarf 180 Dyeing Old Clothes 186 Spring Arrangements 190 Teatime 200 Ohanami 210 Pickled Cherry Blossoms 214 Resources 220 Thank-Yous 223 My Life with Linen Several years ago, my friend Stephanie came to Tokyo from New York and stayed at our house for a few days.

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Drying the bamboo colanders after cooking. Bamboo colanders are made all over Japan. Each region makes a slightly different style, and it’s fun to seek out different weaves and shapes to create a unique and diverse collection. An informal happy hour spread with cold beer and fried fava beans, called soramame. The Art of Kintsugi How to Mend Broken Ceramics and Embrace the Beauty of Imperfection It is always sad when you break a favorite ceramic bowl or glass—especially when it’s a family heirloom, a favorite find from a craft market, or a piece discovered on a special adventure. Many of them carry fond memories of past meals and travels.

Zest: How to Squeeze the Max Out of Life by Andy Cope, Gavin Oattes, Will Hussey

emotional labour, fake news, hedonic treadmill, imposter syndrome, indoor plumbing, Internet of things, Kintsugi, mirror neurons, off grid, Richard Feynman, science of happiness, Snapchat

When a pot/vase/plate gets smashed they glue it back together with lacquer mixed with powdered gold. So instead of hiding the cracks, Kintsugi emphasizes them. In fact it positively celebrates the cracks. The pot, with all its pieces glued together with goldness, is deemed more beautiful than the original. Pots are one thing, but can you imagine if we applied the art of Kintsugi to people? Or, indeed, to yourself? Celebrating our imperfections as a thing of beauty would be a game changer. Kintsugi, as a philosophy, treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to hide. It’s very similar to the easier to pronounce Japanese concept of wabi-sabi which Richard Powell describes thus: ‘Wabi-sabi nurtures all that is authentic by acknowledging three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.’1 Go on, say it: wabi-sabi.

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In another sentence never before written, we’re asking you to be the best little row of potatoes you can be. Embrace Your Inner Kintsugi There’s a Latin expression Materiam superabat opus: ‘the workmanship was better than the material.’ Once you’ve mulled it over you find it’s easily applied to life. The material we’ve been given − genetically, emotionally, financially − that’s where we begin. We don’t control that. We do control what we do with it. While it may be true that you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, you can craft a great life from not very much. Here’s something bordering on profound. All the way from Japan we bring you Kintsugi, the art of restoring pottery. Except the Japanese don’t do it like we do it.

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Cultivate Optimism and Hope 2. Shake Your Ass 3. Invest in Relationships 4. Strip Down 5. Counting Sheep 6. Your Daily Daley 7. Get Committed to Commitment The Shining Path Part 9 Mort to Life Shape Up You Are Enough Embrace Your ‘Ordinary Magic’ It’s Okay to Be a Sidekick Embrace Your Inner Kintsugi Forgiveness Plenty of the F-Word Shine from the Inside Out And Breeeeeathe … Now and Then Dem Bones, Dem Bones Bouncebackability Dozen Part 10 H4[No]R Part 11 They Think It’s All Over Dead or Alive? Who Wants to Live Forever? Grey Matter Matters Life: You’re ‘It’ Acknowledgements The writing team Index End User License Agreement List of Illustrations Part 5 Figure 5.1 The Happiness Pie.

Chasing Slow: Courage to Journey Off the Beaten Path by Erin Loechner

clean water, fear of failure, glass ceiling, Kickstarter, Kintsugi, late fees, Mason jar, off-the-grid, Ralph Waldo Emerson

My friend Mai once told me about kintsugi, a Japanese tradition in which broken pottery is repaired with a metallic-infused lacquer. Kintsugi means “to patch with gold”; in this technique, the potter mends a bowl in delicate, sweeping strokes, taking no care to hide the crack. There are no clear coats, there is no blending, there is no attempt at concealing what has occurred. Instead, the crack is illuminated with gold, with respect, with observance. And then it is pieced together—not to be made new but to be changed. The break itself is the beauty. The crack is worthy of gold. Can you imagine? Kintsugi celebrates failure in a way I am still learning to do, in a way I am only beginning to understand.

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We applaud women for making a speedy return to prepregnancy jeans after giving birth. We cover evidence of teenage acne with a thirty-four-dollar BB cream. We have become expert under-the-rug sweepers, in marriage and in work, in parenting and in life. Under-the-rug sweeping is the default. I once asked my friend what the secret to kintsugi is. Is it the brush? The application? The adhesive, the gold? “Nah,” she said. “It’s just time. When my uncle does it, it can take, like, two months.” I hate the answer time. Time, historically, has not been on my side. We are meant to keep an eye on it. For how long? While living in this deep season of subtraction, it occurs to me that I have not fully seen it as subtraction.

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But I did, and although Ken’s father would be dead by 9:00 a.m. the next morning, burgers or not, it seemed the right thing to do. And this is what I think of when I think of time. I think of sprouting tomato plants and dying fathers-in-law, and I think of the small choices we make daily. I think of how we can choose to kintsugi our circumstance, of how we can choose to amass or not, of how we can choose to speed up or not, of how we can choose to gather burgers on a sad, cold summer holiday. Or not. I have chosen a lot of the right things, and a lot of the wrong ones. I have tried addition—houses and projects and wardrobes and ambitions.

Daughter Detox: Recovering From an Unloving Mother and Reclaiming Your Life by Peg Streep

Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, delayed gratification, fear of failure, hedonic treadmill, helicopter parent, Kintsugi, loss aversion, meta-analysis, Stanford marshmallow experiment, sunk-cost fallacy, Walter Mischel

But perhaps it’s not just about expectations and magical thinking; perhaps the larger problem is how we think of healing and wholeness. That brings me to the Japanese art of kintsugi , which takes a very different view of things that are broken or cracked than we do in the West. When something precious is damaged—whether it’s Rembrandt’s “The Nightwatch,” Michelangelo’s “David,” or a family heirloom—we do what we can to restore it to its former pristine beauty. We want the repairs to be seamless, the cracks or slashes unseen, the object to be fully made whole so that, to all appearances, nothing untoward ever happened to it. Kintsugi takes a very different approach, one which we can apply to healing .

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It’s said to date from the 15th century when, supposedly, a shogun sent a prized object back to China for repair, and it was returned with staples holding it together. Dissatisfied, the shogun set a challenge for artisans to come up with a more aesthetically pleasing way of repair, and kintsugi was the answer. In time, these repaired objects became venerated because the visibility of their cracks and breaks testified to their history, making them emblems of resilience, the passage of time, the inevitability of change, and the possibility of transformation. It’s the transformative nature of kintsugi that’s so arresting because by flaunting the object’s history, the object becomes more than it was before it was damaged; it becomes a new object that is part of the present but also testifies to its past identity.

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One of the main goals of the redirect step is to enhance your ability to feel self-compassion and, indeed, to mother yourself. Recover: The final stage involves seeing the healing process as one that is ongoing, and that really incorporating self-acceptance and self-compassion into your life remains a daily task. Using the Japanese art of kintsugi as its primary metaphor, this step requires you to understand healing in a different way and to make peace with the pace of the process. Chapter Ten is devoted to exercises keyed to each of the stages of recovery. You can do them after reading each chapter or at any other time. ABOUT THE EXERCISES IN DAUGHTER DETOX Most of the work involved in reclaiming your life from the effects of a toxic childhood is about bringing unconscious patterns of thinking and feeling to the surface so that they can be changed through consciousness.

Odd Girl Out: An Autistic Woman in a Neurotypical World by Laura James

autism spectrum disorder, cognitive dissonance, Kintsugi, Minecraft, neurotypical, pink-collar, Skype, Stephen Hawking, TED Talk

I’m coming to accept now that there are huge advantages to being autistic – the quickness of my mind, my ability to take in new information, my intelligence, the passion I feel for causes I believe in, my inability to take offence. The list goes on. I think of Kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with powdered precious metals. The craft and the philosophy treat breakages and repairs as part of the history of any piece, rather than something to hide. I am flawed. I am, in part, broken. Not by my autism, but by my insistence on fighting it and by the stresses it places on me. My being different from most people around me – and the years of living a life not meant for me – have taken their toll. I look up pictures of Kintsugi bowls. I see the gold cracks glistening and realize that without them many of the pieces filling the screen on my laptop would be dull and ordinary.

The Planet Remade: How Geoengineering Could Change the World by Oliver Morton

Albert Einstein, Anthropocene, Apollo 13, Asilomar, Boeing 747, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, carbon credits, carbon tax, Cesare Marchetti: Marchetti’s constant, colonial rule, Colonization of Mars, Columbian Exchange, decarbonisation, demographic transition, Dr. Strangelove, electricity market, Elon Musk, energy transition, Ernest Rutherford, Garrett Hardin, germ theory of disease, Haber-Bosch Process, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, John Harrison: Longitude, John von Neumann, Kim Stanley Robinson, Kintsugi, late capitalism, Louis Pasteur, megaproject, Michael Shellenberger, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, orbital mechanics / astrodynamics, Philip Mirowski, planetary scale, plutocrats, public intellectual, renewable energy transition, rewilding, scientific management, Scramble for Africa, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Silicon Valley, smart grid, South China Sea, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, tech billionaire, Ted Nordhaus, Thomas Malthus, Virgin Galactic

Some see a beauty in these new forms of engineering – the grandeur of holding back great sheets of ice and re-routing planet-spanning currents of air thrills them. But they also see them as representations of a greater beauty, felt not seen – the beauty of an earthsystem newly cared for, newly loved. They draw analogies between the sunset-reddening veil and the golden lacquer used to bind together the fragments of broken pots in the Japanese practice of kintsugi – an art that treats its creations as all the more whole, and all the more beautiful, for having been broken and mended. Others see such talk as dangerous poppycock. Despite these arguments, the ‘naturalism schism’ which some had feared would split the Concert has not done so. More or less unavoidably, the world’s view of what is natural has changed.

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The role of the mammoths is discussed in Doughty, Wolf and Christopher (2010), and I first came across the idea of glacial restraint at a talk by Slawek Tulaczyk at UCSC; both have since seen fictional use in Robinson (2012). I am very grateful to Duncan McClaren for the insight into the relevance of kintsugi; my use of it should not be taken as representing his thinking on the matter. Bibliography Contains books, papers and other documents referred to directly in the text and notes. Abbott, Charles Greeley (1938) The Sun and the Welfare of Man Smithsonian Press Agar, Jon (2013) Science in the 20th Century and Beyond Polity Press Akbari, Hashem, Menon, Surabi and Rosenfeld, Arthur (2008) ‘Global Cooling: Increasing World-Wide Urban Albedos to Offset CO2’ Climatic Change 94 275–286 Alvarez et al. (1980) ‘Extraterrestrial cause for the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction’ Science 208 1095–1108 Anderson, Kevin and Bows, Alice (2008) ‘Reframing the Climate Change Challenge in Light of Post-2000 Emission Trends’ Phil.

The Breakup Monologues: The Unexpected Joy of Heartbreak by Rosie Wilby

Airbnb, Brexit referendum, Burning Man, coronavirus, COVID-19, David Attenborough, Donald Trump, fear of failure, George Santayana, Jeremy Corbyn, Kintsugi, lateral thinking, lockdown, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), social contagion, social distancing, zero-sum game

She rolls over drowsily to be almost touching Dog, in closer proximity than she would ever consciously allow. I stealthily take a photo on my phone, a reminder of this heart-warming moment of cuteness. Downstairs, I hear the sound of Girlfriend’s key in the door as she returns panting and hot from her run. ‘I’m home!’ Me too. Conclusion: How Breakups Keep Us Together 1 Kintsugi or Kinsukuroi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with a lacquer mixed with powdered gold. The philosophy treats the breakage and repair as something to highlight rather than to disguise, a valid part of the object’s history. Similarly, our breakups are vital parts of our personal growth, badges to be worn with pride rather than shame.

How to Fail: Everything I’ve Ever Learned From Things Going Wrong by Elizabeth Day

Airbnb, country house hotel, Desert Island Discs, disintermediation, Easter island, fail fast, fear of failure, financial independence, gender pay gap, Kintsugi, microaggression, Mikhail Gorbachev, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, pre–internet, Rosa Parks, San Francisco homelessness, stem cell, Stephen Fry, TED Talk, unpaid internship

Now, the scaffolding was being dismantled and all I was left with was rubble and the dust of crushed bricks. I did many of the clichéd things that people do in the aftermath of a break-up. Sometimes clichés are clichés for a reason: because they work. I took baths in the middle of the day. I looked up TED talks on heartbreak. I became familiar with the notion of kintsugi, the Japanese art of putting pieces of broken pottery back together and filling the cracks with lacquered resin and powdered gold. On one particularly desperate occasion, I actually Googled ‘how long does it take to get over someone?’ I ate mostly hummus because cooking for myself seemed too much effort.

The Stolen Year by Anya Kamenetz

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, 2021 United States Capitol attack, Anthropocene, basic income, Black Lives Matter, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, Day of the Dead, desegregation, disinformation, Donald Trump, East Village, emotional labour, ending welfare as we know it, epigenetics, food desert, George Floyd, glass ceiling, global pandemic, helicopter parent, informal economy, inventory management, invisible hand, Kintsugi, labor-force participation, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, Maui Hawaii, medical residency, Minecraft, moral panic, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Ponzi scheme, QAnon, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, rent stabilization, risk tolerance, school choice, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Thorstein Veblen, TikTok, traveling salesman, trickle-down economics, universal basic income, upwardly mobile, wages for housework, War on Poverty, white flight, women in the workforce, working poor, Works Progress Administration

If children had the affirmative right to stay with kin, welfare agencies might have to provide families with needed services like housing, income, or drug or mental health counseling. In the current system it’s the families of origin who have the burden of proof and of jumping through hoops to regain their children. This nation could mend the fault lines exposed by this pandemic with a mixture of public and private efforts. The process reminds me of the Japanese art of kintsugi, where cracks in pottery are filled in with lacquer mixed with gold. POST-COVID GROWTH K. Tsianina Lomawaima writes about American Indian boarding schools, another American phenomenon involving children that was both a social catastrophe and a massive injustice. Lomawaima tells me that whenever she gave a public talk, she was faced with diametrically opposed reactions.

Wasteland: The Dirty Truth About What We Throw Away, Where It Goes, and Why It Matters by Oliver Franklin-Wallis

air freight, airport security, Anthropocene, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, barriers to entry, big-box store, bitcoin, British Empire, carbon footprint, circular economy, clean water, climate anxiety, coronavirus, COVID-19, Crossrail, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Elon Musk, epigenetics, Ford Model T, fulfillment center, global pandemic, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, John Snow's cholera map, Kintsugi, lockdown, meta-analysis, microplastics / micro fibres, oil shale / tar sands, planned obsolescence, refrigerator car, sharing economy, social distancing, space junk, Suez canal 1869, Tim Cook: Apple

So, with patient tutelage from my mother-in-law Joanne, I learn to understand the difference between a running and a blanket stitch, affixing patches to worn elbows and ripped knees. I am, and this is an understatement, not a natural. I often find myself pinpricked and irritable, but it’s rewarding work, inducing periods of slow and intense concentration. The threads I use are in bright colours, oranges and yellows, inspired by the Japanese art of Kintsugi – in which broken pottery is repaired with gold, to show the beauty of both damage and repair.I I find it strangely moving. I set out to fix things more: broken toys, house fixtures, a coffee machine which has lingered for months with an internal leak that I take to with a screwdriver before seeking professional help, once it’s obvious I’m way out of my depth.

Bill Marriott: Success Is Never Final--His Life and the Decisions That Built a Hotel Empire by Dale van Atta

Berlin Wall, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Boeing 747, book value, Carl Icahn, Charles Lindbergh, clean water, collective bargaining, corporate raider, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, dumpster diving, financial innovation, Ford Model T, hiring and firing, index card, indoor plumbing, Kickstarter, Kintsugi, Maui Hawaii, medical residency, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, mortgage debt, profit motive, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, short selling, stock buybacks, three-martini lunch, urban renewal

The last photo taken of the four Marriott siblings (left to right): David, Stephen, John, and Debbie. Photo © Gale Frank-Adise Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, one of the Church’s Twelve Apostles, was the concluding speaker. He talked about the privilege of knowing Stephen at BYU. The debilitating illness, Holland said, reminded him of the ancient Japanese practice of kintsugi, repairing cracks in precious porcelain objects with adhesive pure gold. “They enhanced the broken object, which thus became more beautiful and more valuable because of the damage it had experienced. None of us would have had Stephen face what he experienced from such an early age—its terrible, terrible effect.