The beautiful breakage
Hi again! happy to be back here… we’re very inspired this month with our posts – hope you like them 🙂
This time we’ll talk about Kintsugi, this ancient art of fixing broken pottery with gold.
Dating back to the 1400s, it was thought to be the invention of Japanese shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa who challenged his craftsmen to find a more aesthetically pleasing way of fixing a broken tea bowl, rather than the traditional method of using ugly metal staples. Using precious metals, including gold, Japanese craftsmen started to bond together pieces of pottery by drawing attention to, rather than away from, the breaks, which in turn had the effect of making the break the most important part of the piece itself.
All this process has also been used as a metaphor for personal development and healing and is becoming an increasingly popular theme in the world of wellbeing and psychology. In a moment when we’re all too focused on perfection, kintsugi teaches that imperfection and fragility are two things to be celebrated. Nowadays you can find these concepts being translated into life-coaching, art therapy and even business management techniques.
Psychologist Tomás Navarro, says the core message for him is about using kintsugi metaphor to inspire us to develop resilience and strength, giving us tools to overcome adversity and not to be frightened of it. “Everyone faces suffering,” he says. “But it is the way in which we overcome our troubles, and heal our emotional wounds, that is key. Far from avoiding living, we must learn to repair ourselves after an adversity.”
Just as a ceramic piece is fragile, beautiful and strong, so are we. And just as ceramics can break, so too can they be repaired. “Ceramics and life can break into a thousand pieces, but that should be no reason to stop living life intensely, working intensely and keeping alive all our hopes and dreams,” says Navarro. “Adversity is nothing more than a challenge, so do some training to overcome it.”
We’re very happy to receive Elisabeth Moreno, who’s been several times in Japan to learn this ancient technique and is going to share with you all she knows about kintsugi.
More details here.
Un abrazo!
