Beauty in the broken

That something special was a bronze statue of two boxing hares, a token of happy years spent living an idyllic countryside existence in North Yorkshire.

In our throwaway society, there’s something alluring about being given the chance to fix something precious instead of lamenting its loss.

The Japanese, rich in tradition, know exactly how to preserve old things – kintsugi being one way they do so.

Parenting is a joy, but there’s no doubt that co-habiting with rambunctious youngsters has its pain points, including when that something special gets broken.

That something special was, for me, a bronze statue of two boxing hares, a token of happy years spent living an idyllic countryside existence in a converted barn in North Yorkshire.

Just a short few months after being unpacked back in New Zealand, it was broken in mysterious circumstances and, briefly, so was my heart.

Of course my heart soon mended but the statue did not, and since then it’s sat at the back of a shelf awaiting a solution – too special to chuck out, too broken to put on show. So when a spot in a kintsugi workshop was offered, I knew I had the perfect project.

Kintsugi is the rare and dying art of mending something broken, using a precious metal to highlight the repair. The idea is to celebrate the item’s scar tissue so that it becomes part of its unique beauty, rather than use invisible glue to pretend it never happened.

There wasn’t a spare seat in the class, which was made up of women who had come with broken treasures to repair or cracked cheap buys to practise on. Tutor Yuka O’Shannessy gave us a rundown of the process which made it seem impossibly simple. She was more confident in my ability to finish up the project during the two-hour session than I was but, with her encouragement and instructions in hand, I set about my fix-up.

We students were set loose with glue, putty, spatulas and various diamond files to patch up our pieces as best we could.

Though the contemporary technique we were taught was simplified (glue pieces together, fill gaps with putty, cut away extra pieces, smooth as much as possible) it was tricky getting a tidy-looking join while working against the glue or putty-setting clock.

I did my best, but a little glumly accepted that I should have tried a more straightforward project before attempting to make my hares whole again.

Once the putty was sanded and smooth, it was time to apply lacquer, a paint that is the reddish brown colour you often see on the inside of Japanese noodle bowls.

Using a very fine brush, the other students obediently painted delicate lines over their puttied cracks. I had such a wodge joining my hares that their kind of delicacy was not required.

Then came the magic, the game-changing step that dispersed any glum feelings. While the paint was still wet, we lightly dusted over super fine brass powder, transforming our painted brown areas to golden highlights. Grimaces were replaced by the delighted smiles of women seeing something precious and flawed in a new, appreciative light.

After carefully transporting my hares home, I set them to one side for a fortnight for drying before carefully cleaning off the superfluous brass dust for the first real look at my joinedtogether hares.

They were still not perfect, but they were perfectly lovely... and they’re now at the front of that shelf.

The kintsugi workshop was part of the Necessary Traditions Festival 2018 run by Rekindle at the Arts Centre te Matatiki Toi Ora.