Hello friends, I hope you had a good week!

Today I wanted to share the fourth Fleeting Thought with you.

The first three Fleeting Thoughts have been fairly nature based, the first being the unchanging/immortal existence of stones with holes in known as Hagstones and the second being the momentary lives of sandcastles, but this time I wanted to try something a bit different.

As with all my posts there tends to be some aspect filtering back to our wonderful planet and I was recently thinking about how as human beings we’ve evolved into a throw away culture – something that puts a great strain on our wonderful home, not to mention the pollution to the air and sea caused by the constant manufacturing of things for us to buy.

This post started with the fact that I’ve suffered a casualty!

But first a teeny bit of back story…

When my mum was in her twenties she travelled to Asia and visited Japan and Hong Kong bringing back a tiny tea service. Its one of the most beautiful pieces of ceramics I’ve ever seen and I have loved it since I was a small child, the size adds to its charm (I can hold the teapot in the palm of my hand) and the colours are incredible. The china is so thin that it seems really fragile (I don’t remember feeling that way about it when playing with it at about age 6!).

The complete horror I felt when I recently opened the box to find the tray and one of the cups had broken was intense! In todays world I could’ve just thrown the pieces away, but it means so much to me to have been given it by my mum that I thought I would try and repair it using the Japanese repair art of Kintsugi. 

A brief explanation of Kintsugi….

Kintsugi ‘Golden joinery’ is a repair method where broken pieces of pottery are fixed with an epoxy lacquer that is mixed with gold or silver powder, because it makes the repair obvious it is then considered to be part of the objects history giving it a new lease of life.

The exact origins of Kintsugi are unknown but the general philosophy of Kintsugi is a bit like the old saying waste not, want not and embracing the flaws and damage picked up during the items lifetime instead of destroying it completely because its broken, making it special because its damaged…plus it looks beautiful!

While I should’ve used a two part epoxy I actually used a multi purpose glue (it smelt awful) because the cup itself is so small that I wanted to use a glue that would dry pretty much on contact – I did however mix it with a little gold mica powder that I had left from my failed attempts at resin casting. My other reason for using this glue is that I’m probably not gonna be drinking imaginary tea out of it anymore.

I am by no means a pro at this I just thought it would be fun to try using things I have at hand and I really like the Kintsugi ethos. 

Thankfully the little cup is only in three pieces and they fit back together really nicely and the tray hadn’t completely broken.

Basically I used a small paintbrush to spread the gold glue along the damaged edges before holding the pieces together until the glue was touch dry.

Overall I’m so unbelievably happy with how this repair turned out, it was so satisfying and my mums tiny tea service has a new lease of life!

Well, that just about concludes this post…I really hope you enjoyed it! Ever had a go at Kintsugi to mend that special something you just couldn’t throw away? I’d love to know. As always thank you so much for reading my friends, and have a lovely week!