Daniel Medvedov

T A K
he

rt of

intsugi

Madrid
2015

Kintsugi quiere decir en Japons "carpintera de oro" o arreglo dorado.

Kintsukuroi - es el arte japons de remendar/arreglar/rehacer/remediar/ fracturas de
CUORE con barniz de resina amorosa espolvoreada y mezclada con polvo de oro [amor
platnico], plata [amor ertico] o platino [amor eterno]. Es una filosofa que plantea que
las roturas de objetos queridos y las rupturas, fracturas y reparaciones cardacas forman
parte de la ANAMNESIS o historia de un objeto - tienen que mostrarse, y dejarse ver en
lugar de esconderse u ocultarse debajo de la alfombra del comportamiento. Se tienen que
incorporar al diario convivir, y adems hay que hacer eso de modo discreto pero hacerlo
con arte, no tanto para embellecer el entuerto, o el objeto del amor, sino para enfatizar un
renacer, una alquimia refinada de su forma y presentar con esplndida dejadez su
transformacin e historia secreta.
La historia del kintsugi japons cuenta que a finales del siglo XV, cuando el shgun
Ashikaga Yoshimasa envia a China, - para ser reparado, - una de sus tazas de t favoritas,
la taza es reparada con unas feas grapas de metal que la mostraban algo as como tosca y
burda. No fue de su agrado, y busc artesanos japoneses para un ms sutil arreglo del
entuerto.

Have you ever heard of the liquid gold that is used in Japan for mending cracks in pottery
The art of Kintsugi

I remember a story of a broken vase that is mended with gold. The moral is that - "after fixing a
broken thing, it will show perfection and beauty much more than before, because it has
experienced something and it has endured, it has learned and it has fought, it has lived once
again.
Bullshit - Nonsense . . .

Pride, honor and glory, the three most precious things to a man are next to nothing in the eyes of
the universe. Many ones I know think of gold as the tangible image of these three. There is a kind
of a gold that it is not of that world.
AURUM NOSTRUM NON EST AURUM VULGUI
One day my wife comes to me with a cup I use every morning to drink cofee and said: -"Darling,
your coffee cup fell, it's broken."
- I see . . . said I.
I do not share such philosophy that nothing is ever broken, and when I see how they collect with
such great care the shattered pieces and try to put them in place again I just detest it and
remembers me the famous Humpty-Dumpty stanza.

Humpty Dumpty is a character in a Mother Goose nursery rhyme, from England. He is dearly
depicted as an anthropomorphic or, lets said a personified egg.
The most common modern text is:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Could not put Humpty together again.
Rebuild a broken house is the most absurd deal I ever heard. The original rhyme, from 1810, does
not mention that Humpty Dumpty is an egg. In fact, the rhyme is a riddle in English slang of the
time. Humpty Dumpty was used to designate a goofy little person.
The key to the puzzle was the fact that you not need to be necessarily a clumsy person to suffer
such irreparable harm from a fall, at least not as much as an egg would suffer, indeed.
Since the answer is very well known, the rhyme is no longer used as a riddle. But we do not take
care in our everyday life of the warning that each broken heart may not and has not to be fixed
again by any means, because it is even more delicate as a broken egg.
Red HeartGray Heart sate on a wall,
Red HeartGray Heart had a great fall;
Threescore men and threescore women more,
Can not place Gray Heart as it was before.
Blue-Heart Gray-Heart sat on a wall,
Blue-Heart Gray-Heart suffered a great fall.

Even sixty men, sixty-four or more men

Never could fix Gray-Heart together again.

Humpty Dumpty and Alice in Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There.
Illustration by John Tenniel.

Humpty Dumpty has been taken up in many later artistic works. The most famous is perhaps his
appearance in Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, published in 1871 by
Lewis Carroll. In Spanish, he is known as stilt Pancho.
In the book of Caroll, Humpty Dumpty discusses semantics matters and pragmatism with Alicia,
and he explains, in his own way, the meaning of the strange words of the poem " Jabberwocky ".
The rhyme about Humpty Dumpty is taken as the purest incarnation of the condition of human
heart.

Lets say that it was once upon a time an autumn morning when leaves are falling down from the
branches of the trees, and preparing themselves for the coming winter.
The vase used as a cup of tea was important to me. There would be days when I would just look
and stare at the rustic beauty of the the rude cup, with its blue-gray shimmering color. There was
a time when I would take it in my hand and sit and watch the beauty of love collected under the
rude appearance of that object.
Now the shelter of my simplicity was shattered. The vase fell by natural fall, such as may
happend with everything else in life, be broken, be shattered by the intervention of strange and
unknowable forces. I understand this, and I do not think that it can be replaced, but many other
think that everything can be fixed.
If you fix it, it will no longer look as it was before, will look not only damaged or cracked, but the
same energy with which was filled and it had before is now gone away, forever. Just buy a new
one and forget it.
Damaged and broken traces taught me that all wounds and suffering show who we are, show
history and mature growth, it shows perhaps that we understood something of life, it shows may
be that we understood nothing.
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The same as this cup, very much alike our Self might look broken but, in truth, it could never be
broken, so it is no need to be mended, and so it is of no use to try to fix it once again by human
means. Most people pretend that the same as everything else that was broken, a broken heart
mended and fixed becomes whole, and in time, with experience and thousand challeges, it grows
to be one more time a beautiful heart.
After collecting the pieces together, I placed the shattered pieces of the cup in a basket.
I went to an old man who was living in the woods and he, just noticing the basket I was carrying,
asked me:"Young man, are you looking for someone to fix that?"
I said: "Oh, yes, good sir, I am looking for someone to fix it, but this is not an ordinary matter, it
has to be not an ordinary fix, but something magical. The old man smiled and said to me: "There
are few who find beauty in broken materials, broken things, you and I are some individuals like
that, for example. Come, I'll fix it, I'll make it look ten thousand times more beautiful than before
and ever."
I followed the old man into his home in the woods. Was a poor place.
Some are born with such talent of fixing broken hearts, and be sure that there are two types of
artists, those who love broken things and fixem and those who dispise it and throwem away.
People who make beauty with everything do not fade away easily, because they give others their
pure energy as water of a spring and somewhat they themselves never become empty.
"You want this cup to look as ever? You have to know that there is a price for it." said the old
man.
"Whatever it may be, I am willing to pay." - said I
"There is not a payment, but a requirement. My art requires wealth, a visible and tangible
manifestation of it."
"Would you say - gold?"
"Yes, indeed. Do you have gold, right now, for now, at this precise moment, young man?"
asked the old man.
"Well, I have gold as for payment, not, in fact, as a requirement for the job itself." - said I.
"Gold for payment? You must be a rich man!" - said the old man, laughing.
Dear one, I need the gold, not as a payment, but for fixing the cup itself. said he.
"This alchemy is called Kintsugi. It is the art of fixing things in fire through gold. Even though
certain things like cups or hearts break, they do not lose their beauty neither their purpose and
function, and this art shows that there is still a visinvisible beauty after the break, and after the
experience, and that beauty is increased in magnitude by means of magical alchemy. The beauty
in this art is represented by the fixing process and by the gold used in it." -explained the old one.
I never ever heard of such a magical art and business. It was my first time I heard of it. The old
man did not asked me for pay, was just a requirement, only for the need of the material used.
I had to insist to pay him for it, but he plainly refused at all.
It took some time, and we both chatted about things we had encountered, found and know.
Meanwhile the old man finished his work and showed me the fixed vase. The old cup
looked beautiful as ever, and the cracks were replaced by gold, it was shining, it glowed with a
Shibumi light of the first day of the moon, the gray cender-gray light. He did not ask for any
payment, whatsoever.

The art of Kintsugi is not to fix broken things with gold, but to accept broken marks as a trace of
memory, a kind of a ANAMNESIS process, after creating a new and reborn alchemical object,
similar but not identical to the previous one.

Some owners of precious tea-cups deliberately were smashing such valuable pottery in order to be
repaired with the gold technique of kintsugi, which it seems very weird to me.

Kintsugi belongs to Wabi-Sabi, an aesthetic vision of the secret value of the rude and imperfect
objects: the old marks of wear due to much handling by the use of an object over time and space,
is seen a a deep reason for keeping an object in great esteem even after it has broken, as a
justification of the subtle energy accumulated in it and so, the art of kintsugi highlights the cracks
and repairs as an event in the life of an object rather than allowing a dismiss of its service and the
end of its use at the time of its damage, patina or breakage.
Patina is known as a kind of a green or brown film on the surface of bronze or similar metals,
produced by oxidation over a long period. In the eyes of much individuals many bronzes have to
be and have been overcleaned, their original patina removed and artificially replaced, a clear kitch
approach of the old.
Most of the scratchy lines and squiggles visible on old objects are the green patina of oxidized
bronze, not a part of the original coin as cast.
Some heads found in very ancient tombs wear masks of applied gold-leaf, and it gleams strangely
over the green patina of the ancient bronze. A bright copper skin will gradually oxidize to a green
patina that will blend into surrounding nature as a quite curious camouflage. A patina is a gloss or
sheen on wooden furniture produced by age and polishing.
A dining table will acquire a warm patina with age and on a river, figurative plankton may add a
golden patina to the shallow, slowly moving water.
The patina is an impression or appearance of something as saying that he carries the patina of old
money and good breeding.
Kintsugi is related to the Japanese philosophy of "no mind" mushin - or non- attachment and the
acceptance of change and destiny as existential aspects of human life. It is nice to show with
delicacy the possible dammage and the repair in itself as a secret chance to remember the past
experience, a physical expression of the spiritual history of the item which carries a deep meaning
and connotations of existing within the moment, it tells us something about non-attachment and
equanimity and balance amid thousand changing conditions of everyday life.
This are the vicissitudes of our existence over time, inexorable to all humans and breaks, knocks,
shattering to which ceramic ware is subject are similar to breaks, knocks, and shattering of human
heart. This is a poignant cry of our human existence, and in Japan it is called mono no aware,
the gracious and subtle sensitivity, or perhaps a shabby metaphor of the truth.
Traditionally, there are different types of Kintsugi:
Crack - the use of gold dust and resin or lacquer to attach and put together broken pieces with
no, or minimal, overlap or fill-in from missing pieces
Piece Method - when a replacement ceramic fragment is not available and the entirety of the
addition is gold or gold/lacquer compound
Joint Call where a similarly shaped but non-matching fragment is used to replace a missing
piece from the original vessel creating a patchwork effect
The energy of the entire object loose power or it is totally lost when some artisans use staple
repair - a similar technique used to repair broken ceramics: small holes are drilled on both sides
of a crack and then metal staples are bent in order to hold the pieces together. Staple repair was
used in China, England, and Russia as a repair technique for valuable pieces.

Kintsugi is a method to highlight, to show in a new light, or to emphasize what we call

imperfections, considering that mends and seams are just accents towards an unseen detail to
celebrate aesthetical focuss on the missing part, rather than considering it as an absence or a
missing fault. There is an idea of a minimal loss, and repair is seen as a process of rebirth, as it is
in alchemy.
I was always impessed of the distaste showed by family members, or friends when it occurs to
you to leave some circular mark on their tables with your cup of red wine or cofee. They do not
consider that as a trace of memory staying there to remind them that you still exist, or that you
were there a day, a shiny or a rainy day of the past.

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