About Kintsugi
Kintsugi is the Japanese craft of mending broken pottery with lacquer mixed with powdered gold. Instead of hiding the cracks, you trace them. The repair becomes part of the bowl's story, and honestly the bowl ends up more beautiful than it was before it broke.
The story goes that in the 15th century a shogun sent a broken tea bowl back to China to be fixed, and it came home held together with ugly metal staples. Japanese craftsmen went looking for a better way, and landed on gold.
Traditionally, of course, you don't break them yourself. Kintsugi is for the bowl that slipped out of your hands, not one you smashed on purpose. Here you get to do both.
How It Works
Every bowl is generated from scratch: a slightly wobbly hand-thrown shape, then a glaze with its own little quirks. Celadon gets fine crackle, tenmoku gets hare's-fur streaks, shino gets an orange blush and pinholes, indigo gets streaks and a paler rim.
When you draw a break, a crack runs along your line, with a few hairlines branching off and a little splinter where it starts. If it reaches the rim or another crack, a piece comes away. Your brush snaps to the nearest crack, and as the seams fill, the pieces ease back together.
How to Use It
Pick Break and draw a line across the bowl. Let go and it cracks along your line. A line that stops inside the bowl just leaves a crack, and a quick tap is a small knock. Draw as many as you like.
Then pick Mend, or just tap a metal, and paint along the cracks in gold, silver or copper. Pick one of four glazes for a new bowl. Fill nearly every crack and the rest fills itself in, then the light catches it.
Don't stop at one. Break a mended bowl again and the old gold seams stay, with new cracks running through them.
Sources and Reading
Kintsugi
on Wikipedia.
Wabi-sabi
on Wikipedia, the idea of beauty in imperfection that sits underneath it.