Sunday, October 7, 2018

Visibly Repaired

[Note: This is not lectionary-related, just thoughts about art and life through eyes of faith.]

If something is broken, it's broken. You can ignore it. But it's still broken. Perhaps in its broken state it is still valuable - monetarily or in its function or sentimentally. Perhaps it could be of value again if it were repaired. It may be the case that there is no value in fixing it, so it is best thrown away.

If you decide to keep this broken thing and repair it, you will need to decide to what extent it should be repaired. The appraisers on "Antiques Roadshow" make statements about this all the time. How much owners should invest in repairing and/or restoring their treasures. How much the value (monetary) of the object might increase if it is repaired or restored. How much would be too much to spend on repairing or restoring the object. It will be up to the owner to decide about the degree of restoration the object will see.

Kintsugi is a repair process in Japanese ceramic practice. Broken items are repaired with lacquer, and then the lacquer is brushed with gold powder. Far from blending in so as to be invisible, kintsugi incorporates the brokenness into the design of the vessel. The process accepts the brokenness as part of the history of the object. It's even possible that people would actually break whole things so that they could be repaired. What a remarkable thing that its beauty made the repair desirable.
Tea Bowl, White Satsuma ware. 17th century. Freer-Sackler Gallery, Washington, DC. 

With care and attention, broken things - people, relationships, nations - can be repaired. But let's not try to repair so that we can pretend the break never happened. Let's acknowledge the brokenness and then give our best efforts to make the repairs beautiful.

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