Kinsugi Broken Pottery

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Kintsugi Essay The dictionary definition of Kintsugi is, “the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum” but the form of art has a deeper meaning than just a way to fix broken pottery. The deeper meaning of Kintsugi is that it is also a metaphor about how our mistakes make us perfect and our imperfections make us beautiful. Kintsugi has been used for over 500 years and it is believed that Kintsugi may have originated when Japanese emperor Ashikaga Yoshimasa sent a damaged Chinese tea bowl back to China for repairs in the late 15th century. When the tea bowl was returned it was repaired with ugly metal staples this may have prompted Japanese craftsmen to look for a more aesthetically pleasing repair job. Kintsugi can be used on nearly anything that is …show more content…

My grandmother lost her mom when she was growing up. She told me that she got a lot of pity from people when really she just wanted to be treated normal instead she was being treated like she was fragile and broken. People didn’t realize that when they asked her how she was doing, all she wanted to do was go play and be treated like a normal kid. This connects to Kintsugi because when a piece of pottery is broken people think that it can’t be fixed; just like people thought my grandmother couldn’t or wouldn’t be fixed. Kintsugi makes broken pottery beautiful again and even more beautiful than it was before. Also, it was that imperfection, that brokenness by grandmother felt that what really made her a beautiful person. Since her mother died, she has lived her life to the fullest, because she knows firsthand that you don’t know when your time is up. Just because something is broken doesn’t mean that you should throw it away, you should try to fix it, because it can still become something beautiful once

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