I’ve changed my mind about Kintsugi. I have felt that if a pot was broken, cracked, chipped or flawed it should be smashed and added to the shard pile. The amateur gloppy gold-painted kintsugi-wannabe repairs that seem to be currently acceptable, just don’t do it for me. But now I’ve seen the work of Naoko Fukumaru and understand how an expert can repair and make perfect, and even improve, a treasure.

https://www.richmondartgallery.org/imperfectofferings

I recommend checking the above link to RAG and this show. Do watch the four videos. They feature Naoko Fukumaru, Jesse Birch, Glenn Lewis and in the fourth Naoko interviews Mick Henry.

From Wikipedia: As a philosophy, kintsugi is similar to the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi, an embracing of the flawed or imperfect.^[11][12]Japanese aesthetics values marks of wear from the use of an object. This can be seen as a rationale for keeping an object around even after it has broken and as a justification of kintsugi itself, highlighting the cracks and repairs as simply an event in the life of an object rather than allowing its service to end at the time of its damage or breakage, and can be seen as a variant of the adage “Waste not, want not”.^[13]

Several pottery enthusiasts encouraged me to make the trek to Richmond and I finally got to Richmond Art Gallery on the show’s last day. Jan Kidnie and I chose the Sunday because there were to be tea servings and a guided tour of the exhibit with Naoko. I was pleased to get there in time to hear most of Naoko’s enthusiastic presentation as she wandered amongst the many pottery treasures. Masks were mandatory and in the large gallery we never felt too packed, even though this last day was well attended.

The primary purpose of this enormous show was to highlight the talents of Naoko. She explained that she worked as a fine art restorer for twenty years in Kyoto, where her father was an antiques dealer. But it was not until she moved to Canada three years ago that she began to research the ancient Japanese art of Kintsugi. She learnt online and sent to Japan for the traditional supplies. Now she has repaired and enhanced many, many much-loved pots and sculptures and demonstrated how the painstaking gluing and filling and finally the adding of subtle, delicate fine lines of gold can save and actually enhance ‘imperfect offerings’. We, the BC potters gazing fondly at work by our heroes, were treated to a huge display of treasured pieces. Everything is this show was imperfect.. either completely smashed, slightly broken or merely cracked but all have now been given further life, with the Kintsugi repair recording the history of each one.

Apart from pots Naoko has extended her passion to restoring to other media. There were marvellously repaired textiles and glass, and even a carved wooden mask. Unashamedly I concentrated on the pots.

One extraordinary display grabbed our attention. Having heard of the now-defunct Slug Pottery which was in Roberts Creek, on the Sunshine Coast, Naoko contacted retired potter Mick Henry and was given permission to excavate the pottery’s vast shard pile. ‘A Potter’s Best Friend is His Hammer’ goes the well-known potter’s saying, and this the Slug Potters did. But Naoko was fascinated by the misfired, cratered, bent, badly glazed pieces that had been rejected from the many firings that had taken place there in the last century. To celebrate the variety of their imperfections Naoko collected many many shards and their surrounding dirt and ash and arranged them in a big circle on the gallery floor. On plinths surrounding this shard homage were Naoko’s arrangements of new creations from broken random potsherds.

Jesse Birch has made a tea-pot and tea-bowls which are intended for use in the gallery’s kitchen, not just to be items on display. This continues the thought he used in his show in Nanaimo Art Gallery. He wants us to remember that pots can and should be used for flowers, tea, cooking and storage. Unfortunately the tea-pot’s lid broke as he tried to remove it after its wood-firing. He had Naoko repair it so the tea-set became part of the ‘Imperfect Offerings’ exhibition. You have to look very closely at the tea-pot to know that it has been repaired, and that it has a history. My photo shows the yunomi and the tea-pot and serendipitously, a gorgeous Lari Robson salt-glazed jug retrieved from the kitchen for hot water.

Long-ago Leach apprentice Glenn Lewis returned to St Ives recently and while there, threw traditional English forms using porcelain and glazing them with celadon glaze. Sadly they broke in the shipping back to Vancouver so Glenn glued them back together, using his form of Kintsugi. They are displayed on plinths in front of his photographs of flowers.

I was introduced to Kim Steele and her daughter Natalie, who’d travelled in from Chilliwack to see the show. Kim is the daughter of Ian Steele who was one of four BC potters to have apprenticed with Bernard Leach all those years ago. Participants at the first Malaspina Ceramics conference back the seventies were invited to visit Ian at his salt kiln in Nanoose Bay, which I did. And in 1984 Alan and I looked up Ian and his weaver wife at the time (Kim’s mother) at their studio in Devon.

This is the moment to mention that 1984 was the year that I took a salt-firing workshop with Douglas Phillips in Queen Camel, Somerset. He recommended that we visit other important local potters and top of the list was John Leach’s Muchelney Pottery not far away. Yesterday we read the news that dear John has died. We have fond memories of billetting John here while he gave a workshop at Shadbolt Centre. He so enjoyed being taken to visit the Museum of Anthropology with Al as his guide. A fine memory for the group of potters who joined our one-off tour of British potteries and Archaeology in 2005 was the time John gave us at his and Lizzie’s home, demonstrating in the studio, showing us the kiln barn and the gallery and even leading us on a walk around his legacy woodland. John was very fond of the motto ‘Potters of the World, Ignite!’  We shall John, with fond memories.