Kintsugi – Art of Repair
traditionalkyoto.com
traditionalkyoto.com
I try to point out to people who use words like "legacy" as an insult that the system having reached that status and still being maintained is a sign that it has served a lot in the past and probably can if maintained with care. I think the "my dream would be to rewrite it from scratch using [FOTM language]" is a bad mindset.
I think we should be curious about old software like we are about many physical old objects. You wouldn't visit a windmill and call it a terrible relic of the past; you would marvel at how ingenuous people had been with so little back then).
By cherishing and caring for what we have been handed over, we have a great opportunity to maintain and improve it, and hand it over to the next generation/team.
I live in Japan where the care for other people work is everywhere, and i can witness how it then motivate people to do their best, and cultivate a culture of respect and care.
(a) Wind mills _are_ relics from the past. They were replaced with [FOTM mills] as soon as better alternatives became available (probably during the industrial revolution?).
(b) Wind mills themselves are only the pinnacle of what was possible at that time and as [FOTM mills], they have replaced other types of mills (ox- or hand-driven) that came before them.
Still, your point stands, software can be build to last the test of time. I "maintain" two (tiny) Haskell libraries [0] that each do one very specific thing. And those have been basically unchanged since I wrote them five years ago.
[0] 18 stars on Github is worth something, right? ... right? :-)
This is not true. The definition of "better" doesn't exist as it's subjective. Windmills of all types exist today, and co-existed back then. Some people like certain trade-offs, and other people like other trade-offs. Saying for example that a metal tool is better than a wood tool is simply wrong. Some people to this day use very old technology, very much on purpose, because they deem it superior. People still marvel at stone buildings even though modern buildings use cement. There are different types or cement actually and all have pros and cons. Like Roman cement may last longer at the cost of needing more time/money whereas modern cement can be mass produced.
You can find analogies in software where old C tools are to this day cherished by many. Another example is people collecting retro hardware, or recreating old software like SerenityOS.
Some "improvements" may not be seem as such by some users, the same way an old master cheese maker does not see an industrial steel milk mixer as an improvement for what they are trying to do, as well the lifestyle they are trying to promote.
I'm not saying that they are bad. I've been using them at works for years. I'm saying that some people chose to focus on "old" tech and produce web pages and webapps without much tools. The advantage of this approach is that your environment is stable so you can actually learn and master the tools. You can even find crazy tricks and "abuse" some of the features as you become really good at those.
It can be liberating to stop changing tools every year, but instead learn the intricacies of the basic tools that will never change.
It’s interesting to consider that almost everything we purchase can be improved immediately. Usually there are cost savings that result in sub-par properties.
Some random examples:
-Injection molded kitchen ware can’t easily have through holes to drain water during dishwashing. This can easily be fixed :)
-New windows don’t always have high quality silicone sealant at the interface between the window and the wood.One can add this to prevent condensation in the gaps (use blue tape to mask everywhere you don’t want the silicone)
-New clothes don’t have extra anti-stain materials near the collars, which is where they wear out firstly
First thing I do with a trash can is drill some holes a few inches from the bottom. When the bag is full the holes will let in some air and make bag removal much easier. Keep the holes away from the bottom to reduce the risk of a broken bag leaking any spilled liquids.
The containers of salt I buy have the classic flip top aluminum pour spout. The tip of the spout can be bent away from the lid to aid in opening and reduce the risk of fingernail injury.
The point is, if you're trying to contain some amount of fluid, you cut pretty near but not entirely near the bottom. If you want a waterproof container, you don't cut at all. That's about it. Nobody's going to vary the location for functional reasons. And don't get too hung up on my example number.
I think it's not just purchases, it's basically everything we ever come in contact with. See e.g. the fact that in software there seems to be a never ending set of long-hanging fruit tasks that can always be assigned to onboard new team members.
More generally there seems to be the great cycle of off-the-shelf -> customization -> full integration -> modularization -> off-the-shelf that affects everything and, given the time and energy, you can always move "forward" in this cycle.
Which was a different and useful way of looking at modern products: something new can still be "raw material."
Likewise, I don't strive for authentic and original when fixing up old VAXen, Amigas, or Macs. I want functional, and I want new caps that're better than original.
It's nice to know there's an appreciation for not original, but better.
The rest of the car is another matter ;)
When I first learned of Kintsugi a few years ago, my keyboard was the first thing I thought of. The original keyboard had about half of the keys non-functional or working incorrectly (double/triple letters). So I got a second keyboard and ended up testing all keys on both, keeping the working ones on the original, and desoldering/resoldering the working ones from the donor to the original. This took a few months on and off since I'd keep discovering new keys that were slightly broken or intermittent.
I also modified the keyboard to remove a couple of plastic tabs, to make the top covers easier to remove (since I had to do it so many times). The ribbon cable connecting both halves is also prone to failure, so I sanded down some of the plastic around it to ensure it wouldn't get snagged or compressed (and ordered a spare cable from a parts keyboard as well). I also did a bit of Retrobrite to restore it to its original colour.
Anyway, you really have to love something a lot to put that much effort into it (and probably wouldn't have bothered/had time if I had a baby when I got it a few years ago).
※ - Photo here: https://flic.kr/p/2myqXVR
That said, I have had to make some concessions to the future. It was next to impossible to find stock lamps - they're just inches off the ground, and not made of laminated glass. They'll shatter easily due to road debris. I can buy old, foggy replacements for $200. But I actually ended up buying one-off plastic lamps for $30. At least this way, they'll not only look better, but last longer.
I would love to hear more about this car!
One cool example of the period charm is a "butler bell" in the dining room. I had never seen or heard of this concept before, but basically it's a rope/pulley system that rings a bell in the kitchen to notify your butler that you need him. That way, the butler can stay in the kitchen while the bourgeoisie feast in peace.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/03/23/future-...
Or maybe it's just that non-Japanese people have more interest in it than Japanese do?
If anyone has more knowledge about kintsugi, I would love some historical references which confirm that this technique was actually used in the past.
[0]: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%87%91%E7%B6%99%E3%81%8E
https://noma.org/kintsugi-reflects-beauty-in-flaws-strength-...
How would one know, except if they do read Japanese and searched their bibliography (including old tomes)?
Merely searching for the japanese version of the term on Google might not be the best way - the Japanese might just implicit use the technique without naming it and writing much about it, for example. Or might have different terms for the practice, and that's just one that caught on in the west as the catch-all term.
Plus it might not been a popular practice there for way over 50+ years (as they had been busy recovering from WWII and modernizing their industry), which is the same time span when westerners discovered it.
Not once has anyone heard of it.
It's just another fake viral sensation that we cooked up in the USA
There's plenty of historical evidence that it's been done, but it's not some common thing that people in Japan regularly do. Modern Japanese people actually love buying disposable plastic crap, then throwing it out when there's the slightest thing wrong with it.
Since they're right next door to China, they can get a lot of fairly nice plastic stuff at the dollar store. You pop into the 100 yen store, and pay 100 yen +tax for the exact same plastic junk that would cost you $5 to $20 per item at Target or Wal-Mart in the USA
* For the record, I'm not asking "What's kintsugi?", I'm asking "Hey, have you ever heard of this thing where you fix a broken item using gold? Like gold glue?", and I show them the viral post du jour
Almost nobody one would casually ask in Europe has heard of tons of European medieval, renaissance, or even 19th century techniques and terms either.
For example, 99.9% of the people don't know that Chopin is not a classical composer (it's a romantic one) - laymen just call the whole "old orchestral music" thing "classical".
How many know what chiaroscuro (a huge tradition once) means, or what a zither is?
>There's plenty of historical evidence that it's been done, but it's not some common thing that people in Japan regularly do.
Well, it was never a "common thing that people in Japan regularly do". It was a period-specific aesthetic choice of crafts artists.
>I'm asking "Hey, have you ever heard of this thing where you fix a broken item using gold? Like gold glue?", and I show them the viral post du jour
Sorry, someone's story said that modern Japanese would fix pottery using gold as glue?
Most don't even have any expensive pottery, aside household items they use for soup, to drink tea, and stuff. At best they'll have some ordinary vases...
Even TFA says: "a unique form of Japanese art restoration known as kintsugi."
Art restoration - not what Hiroshi Sixpack does to fix his broken tea cup or kitchen plate.
There are… a lot of things like this, and I’m not sure why Japan is made out to be more mythical than most countries.
Highly recommended.
継 is used in ideas like inheritance, succession, relief (pitcher), and relays (the thing that provides continuity between things).
Anyway, your comment really made me laugh, so please take your upvote :D
So, for what it's worth, I personally would be neither deterred nor comforted by the information you presented.
However, "I do not understand if this is safe and don't have the time to research it to my satisfaction" is a totally solid reason for deciding not to do something on safety grounds in my book.
If you're able to email the company and ask for an SDS, they'll probably give it to you. I've had luck with this before.
For use on wooden tableware I would suggest.
- 1 coat of urushi diluted 1/2 with pine turpentine. Apply liberally to allow it to soak into the wood then wipe the entire surface down removing excess. Place in a closed box with (but not touching) a wet towel (make sure it doesn't dry out) for roughly 1 week. The moisture + time will cure the urushi.
- repeat 1 or 2 times (or as many times as you like) with undiluted urushi letting it cure between each coat.
What's old is new.
Came in to (also) say that kintsugi isn't about making things better, but more about the acceptance of the damage as part of the item's history which is sorta beautiful and poetic in its own way.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
p.s. Notice how many comments in this thread are making objections to the distracting and extraneous word 'better' (which was, in the submitted title, but nowhere in the original article) that's a good example of (one reason) why we have this rule.
Reading the article I apparently had the wrong impression on how this is done. They talk about lacquer mixed with gold dust ... I somehow got the impression that they use gold and capillary suction to get the gold to flow into the fracture.
To display the bowls it works quite well... but that's about it.
But there are a lot of kits out there, and I still have some other items I might give another go with a better kit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7hQQHEJWAc (extreme example and not necessarily for repairs but gets a lot of colors in)
I thought this was an art form but, living in Japan I couldn't find any ... I found a couple of schools and the schools had student and teacher projects on display but I didn't find places selling much as "art" or "crafts". I'm not saying I found zero. Rather I'm saying I found so little that my conclusion is this is mostly (a) a fun hobby and (b) a service where you can hire someone to fix a cherished item.
"Kintsugi: The Art of Embracing Damage"
I first learnt of Kintsugi from a ceramics artist. Truly fascinating.
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