The Japanese tradition of repairing with golden joins is fascinating, because:

– it repairs objects and elevates the value beyond when it wasn’t broken
– it celebrates the imperfect, the damaged and gives it a new life
– it uses gold but doesn’t look overly shiny
– it takes a crack (antispace, unwanted separation) and makes it the main character, the centre piece
– it shows the ‘natural line of breaking’ of the broken object. It reveals the internal weaknesses. It turns the most sterile manmade object into something that is very much part of nature.

Joining is a returning fascination for me. I think this Japanese repairing is one of the finest examples. It uses a resin with sprinkled gold (or other metal) dust to make it look like solid gold. I want to investigate joining different woods with coloured or textured resins to create my ‘manmade sediment layers’.