Page 16 - BSAM 2018 Q4

Golden Joinery
Mending Broken The longer you practice bonsai, the more likely it is that you’ll suffer the setback of a broken pot. Was it broken by careless handling or improper packing when shipped? Did the wind topple your tree and break the pot? Whatever the misfortune, the end result is a useless item, and a waste of money, time, and energy. Undaunted, you researched repair options, only to realize that it was a lost cause—either too time-consuming
Pots with the Kintsugi Process
By Massimo Bandera, Italy and Joe Grande, Canada Photos courtesy Massimo Bandera
Top; “Aurora del Giorno,” Larix decidua, h 65 cm. Tokoname container restored with the Kintsugi process. This Kintsugi represents lightning, to suggest the extreme environment in which this bonsai survived. Massimo Bandera collection. Photo, Pangrazi 2010.
or too expensive, but I hope you kept the pieces.
While the goal of traditional Western-style ceramic repair is to make the repair unnoticeable and the piece look like it was never damaged, there’s a four-hundred-year-old Japanese tradition that brings attention to the pot’s calamity and celebrates its imperfection. It’s a celebration of the pot’s history, not an end to its story, to be thrown out with the trash. This repair technique is called kintsugi, or “golden joinery” and uses a special lacquer, urushi, with gold, silver, or platinum, to mend objects in a way that highlights (rather than hides) the damage. Beautiful seams of gold glimmer in the cracks
of ceramic ware, giving a unique appearance to the piece.
14 | BCI | October/November/December 2018