Restoring broken dishes | part 1

  "I allow time to bite my ear." An interview with Konstantin Korka about kintsugi - a unique Japanese technique for restoring broken dishes

In the days of ubiquitous plastic and disposable everything, it is difficult to imagine the way of life and thought of a person who spends months restoring a single split cup - with the help of urusi varnish, precious metals and an unthinkable amount of painstaking work. However, there are such unique ones, albeit in piece copies: the special correspondent of "Knife" Pavel Korkin talked with Konstantin Korka, who opened the first workshop in Russia specializing in restoring broken dishes using the most complicated Japanese technique of kintsugi. Fortunately, the uniqueness of his craft skills did not push Konstantin to the crooked path of pseudo-Eastern wisdom and aesthetic snobbery: the breadth of his views, balanced judgment and wit will pleasantly surprise you.

- Tell us what the kintsugi technique is, how did you discover it for yourself and what did you do before?

- If it's dry, then kintsugi is the traditional Japanese art of repairing ceramics with urushi lacquer with gold, one of the subtypes of urusitsugi lacquer repair.

This is such a transformation of broken objects into something beautiful, and even - unlike the results of conventional types of restoration - such objects can be used for their intended purpose. That is, the mug has broken and, if restored in the usual way, it will turn into a shelf decoration, and the mug will essentially cease to be, it will not be possible to use it. With kintsugi, the mug will remain a mug, you can drink tea and enjoy the gold-highlighted stitches.

I once worked as an industrial climber, this is a seasonal job, and in the off-season you sit around. So I sat drinking tea and broke my chahai (tea drip). Since there was nothing to do, and there was still free money, after a long search, I found an American who lives in Japan and is engaged in kintsugi - he has his own YouTube channel, where he glues the dishes without explaining anything. Well, he also traded in varnish.

I ordered a set for myself and for more than six months tried to understand what is mixed with what and how it works in general. At that time, six years ago, it was the only source of information about kintsugi in English. It took me about two and a half years to more or less master the technique, and so far every subject is learning and something new. By the way, I never fixed my chahai.

And before that, I was not only an industrial climber - a photographer, translator, worked in a boiler room, at a construction site, I tried many things.

The working process

The repair begins with a discussion of the appearance of the finished product and a selection of materials for repair. All the utensils that came to me are thoroughly washed and prepared for repair. I am doing trial assemblies to account for possible deformations.

The next stage is the preparation of a special adhesive based on raw urushi varnish and gluing the fragments. This composition dries for a very long time (up to two months), and all this time the product must remain at rest.

The next stage is cleaning the excess adhesive, checking the correct alignment of the fragments of the broken dishes.

If the result does not suit me, then everything is repeated from the beginning. If all is well, then I proceed to the next stage.

After the adhesive has dried and cleaned, a thin layer of urushi varnish is applied to the seams. This is done to protect the adhesive layer and create an even seam surface. There can be many such layers - about 5–6. Each layer dries for about a week. After drying, each layer is polished. This stage is the longest. It can be repeated until I am satisfied with the result.

The final stage is the application of varnish with metal powder to the seams. It can be platinum, gold, silver, copper, and more. <…>

After the repairs are completed, I run tests with hot water to ensure the success of the repair.

(Text from the website of Konstantin Korka)

- What are the most interesting things you have ever revived? (For example, I saw a restored antique Christmas tree decoration in your group.)

“The important thing is that an“ interesting ”thing does not mean“ expensive ”or“ old ”at all. I had a lot of them, and each is good in its own way. For example, in the "most labor-intensive" nomination, let the bowl from the excavations, as they say, of the 12th century, with which I varnished a little more than a third of the side and painted it to my taste, win. It was painful, meditative, but beautiful. Months of sculpting, which had to be broken, then re-sculpted, then endless layers of varnish and, finally, painting. If you need a solid illustration of self-education through labor - then here it is. On one subject, I gained life and craft experience as in ten ordinary repairs.

Let there be a Starbucks mug in the Strange and Funny nomination.

"I allow time to bite my ear." An interview with Konstantin Korka about kintsugi - a unique Japanese technique for restoring broken dishes

In the days of ubiquitous plastic and disposable everything, it is difficult to imagine the way of life and thought of a person who spends months restoring a single split cup - with the help of urusi varnish, precious metals and an unthinkable amount of painstaking work. However, there are such unique ones, albeit in piece copies: the special correspondent of "Knife" Pavel Korkin talked with Konstantin Korka, who opened the first workshop in Russia specializing in restoring broken dishes using the most complicated Japanese technique of kintsugi. Fortunately, the uniqueness of his craft skills did not push Konstantin to the crooked path of pseudo-Eastern wisdom and aesthetic snobbery: the breadth of his views, balanced judgment and wit will pleasantly surprise you.

- Tell us what the kintsugi technique is, how did you discover it for yourself and what did you do before?

- If it's dry, then kintsugi is the traditional Japanese art of repairing ceramics with urushi lacquer with gold, one of the subtypes of urusitsugi lacquer repair.

This is such a transformation of broken objects into something beautiful, and even - unlike the results of conventional types of restoration - such objects can be used for their intended purpose. That is, the mug has broken and, if restored in the usual way, it will turn into a shelf decoration, and the mug will essentially cease to be, it will not be possible to use it. With kintsugi, the mug will remain a mug, you can drink tea and enjoy the gold-highlighted stitches.

I once worked as an industrial climber, this is a seasonal job, and in the off-season you sit around. So I sat drinking tea and broke my chahai (tea drip). Since there was nothing to do, and there was still free money, after a long search, I found an American who lives in Japan and is engaged in kintsugi - he has his own YouTube channel, where he glues the dishes without explaining anything. Well, he also traded in varnish.

I ordered a set for myself and for more than six months tried to understand what is mixed with what and how it works in general. At that time, six years ago, it was the only source of information about kintsugi in English. It took me about two and a half years to more or less master the technique, and so far every subject is learning and something new. By the way, I never fixed my chahai.

And before that, I was not only an industrial climber - a photographer, translator, worked in a boiler room, at a construction site, I tried many things.

The working process

The repair begins with a discussion of the appearance of the finished product and a selection of materials for repair. All the utensils that came to me are thoroughly washed and prepared for repair. I am doing trial assemblies to account for possible deformations.

The next stage is the preparation of a special adhesive based on raw urushi varnish and gluing the fragments. This composition dries for a very long time (up to two months), and all this time the product must remain at rest.

The next stage is cleaning the excess adhesive, checking the correct alignment of the fragments of the broken dishes.

If the result does not suit me, then everything is repeated from the beginning. If all is well, then I proceed to the next stage.

After the adhesive has dried and cleaned, a thin layer of urushi varnish is applied to the seams. This is done to protect the adhesive layer and create an even seam surface. There can be many such layers - about 5–6. Each layer dries for about a week. After drying, each layer is polished. This stage is the longest. It can be repeated until I am satisfied with the result.

The final stage is the application of varnish with metal powder to the seams. It can be platinum, gold, silver, copper, and more. <…>

After the repairs are completed, I run tests with hot water to ensure the success of the repair.