Why Kintsugi?

It's broken, not worthless.

The culture of disposable products is not sustainable.

The constraints of working with an existing object spark creativity.

I don't want "like new," I want "better than new."

I have kids, therefore I have broken things.

I love making things. I pride myself on being able to make just about anything if I try hard enough. The problem is that I can't necessarily make it better, faster, or cheaper than someone else. In most cases a quick search will turn up something that does what I want for cheaper than I can make it, at good enough quality, and available to ship now. So what do I choose to make? It would be great to make something new and unique, and I do that at work and occasionally at home, but for a hobby there needs to be another motive. I have a few that drive my passions: curiosity, fun, sentiment.

Curiosity means that I want to know more. Even the slightest mystery intrigues me. When I first learned about Kintsugi I was fascinated by how it worked. I had tried to repair some ceramics in the past (more on that later) and it was not very successful... ok, it was a fiasco. Here was a technique that made quality repairs, and made them beautiful. I needed to know more. Spoiler alert: it isn't magic. Kintsugi doesn't make repair easy, it takes a lot of work to make a quality repair, what Kintsugi does is honor that effort.

Fun means that I need to enjoy the process. For me this applies to almost any form of making. Sometimes I just need to relax my brain and follow instructions. Sometimes I need to challenge my brain to solve puzzles or come up with novel ideas. Many times I just need the satisfaction of seeing something form from nothing. Making isn't about the end product, it is about how you get there. Kintsugi can fall anywhere in this spectrum. A simple repair might just involve following the techniques developed and honed over centuries by artisans and craftspeople. A complex repair might involve predetermining an optimal order of operations and many weeks of small adjustments and careful consideration. Either way the result is beautiful and fulfilling.

Sentiment is the real differentiator. My first pre-Kintsugi repair was a ceramic mask from my wife's collection. I dropped it while trying to hang it up, so I tried to assuage my guilt by repairing it. I armed myself wit super glue, toothpicks, paper towels, some sheets of newspaper, and overconfidence. Ten minutes later I had a weirdly lumpy mask with newsprint stuck to the bulges of glue that oozed out of every crack. My fingers felt like they were covered in popcorn kernel shells: hard thin crusts that were nearly impossible to remove, and I had removed the finish from my dining room table in  a couple of places. Nevertheless, we still own the mask, and now it is more personal than ever; it is part of our history together (and it probably contains my DNA in the pieces of skin that it claimed). I was obviously not particularly satisfied with the repair, but sending it out to be repaired professionally would have been expensive, and more importantly it wouldn't have had the same meaning. It always would have been "that is the mask that Cody broke, and it will never be the same." Now it is "the mask that Cody repaired," and that makes all the difference.

These factors and others combine to make Kintsugi an intriguing art. Instead of making an LED blink on an Arduino I am actively creating part of my family's history. This differentiates Kintsugi from all of the Lego sets I have built or improvised, from the Rube Goldberg style solutions to minor problems, and all of the other little things I have made.