Photo: Irina Sabatina
Tomoka Tsuchida repairs broken ceramics in Paris with natural urushi lacquer, and the first thing she will tell you is that gold is not the point.
Kintsugi has become one of Europe’s favourite borrowed words. It turns up in self-help books, in tattoo studios and on mugs, always with the same message: your scars make you beautiful. Tomoka Tsuchida grew up in Japan, works in Paris under the name Kintsugi Paris, and still studies maki-e lacquer technique with her master in Japan. She does the actual work, slowly, in a material that sets its own pace.
We wrote to her because kintsugi sits very close to what LOOKS says about flaws.
Our project argues that a flaw rarely ruins anything that has character, and that flawlessness is a little suspicious. A golden seam across a bowl looks like that idea made visible. We expected her to agree. What came back was better: a patient correction of almost everything the West thinks it knows about her craft.
What follows is her own account, shortened, in her words.
She answered all eight questions at length. We have cut for space and changed nothing in the meaning.
Kintsugi makes the break the most visible part of the object. When you first hold a broken piece, how do you decide which line to bring forward and which to let sit quietly?
Kintsugi is not necessarily about making damage more visible. In traditional repair, there are also techniques such as tomonaoshi, where the repaired area is blended back into the object so that the intervention becomes almost invisible.
When I first hold a broken object, the most important question for me is: what makes this object what it is? What is its particular character? I do not want the repair to destroy the beauty or identity that the object already has.
The object comes first, and the technique should respond to it. Sometimes that means gold, sometimes silver, sometimes urushi alone, and sometimes a much quieter repair. Deciding which line to bring forward and which to let sit quietly is not simply a decorative choice made at the beginning. It is something I discover by spending time with the object and responding to what it already is.
You work in natural urushi, which is slow and demanding. What does the slowness of the material change in how the finished repair looks?
I have also experienced the kind of repair that is often called “kintsugi” today, using synthetic materials that allow the whole process to be completed within a few hours. What I strongly felt when working that way was a constant sense of being rushed. Because the material hardens so quickly, making decisions and completing the work before it sets can easily become the priority.
Natural urushi, on the other hand, cures slowly. Rather than trying to shorten the material’s own time, we have to adjust ourselves to the time of the material. By following that rhythm, there is room at each stage to pause, correct subtle misalignments, refine a line, and reconsider what the next step should be.
For me, the greatest difference created by the slowness of urushi is that it gives me time for the most important decisions.
A repaired bowl is not the bowl it was. Do the people who bring you their objects want the old one back, or do they already want the new one?
I think that by the time people decide to bring an object to me for repair, they have already accepted that it will not simply return to exactly what it was before it was broken.
What I find especially striking is that many people already look happy when they hand me the broken object, even though I have not repaired anything yet. I think it is because something important to them has been broken, but they no longer feel that this has to be the end of its story.
So perhaps it is not really about wanting the old object back, or wanting a completely new one. It is about wanting to continue living with the same object, while accepting that its history has changed it.
Is there a kind of damage you would not gild, something that should stay as it is?
Yes, absolutely. In fact, placing gold is not the most important thing for me. I am not aiming for a repair in which the gold, or the repaired area itself, becomes the only thing that stands out.
I often find the cracks and traces created by breakage beautiful in themselves. So if adding something would diminish that beauty, I may choose not to intervene.
No two objects ever break in exactly the same way. Even two identical bowls will develop different cracks, different lines, and different traces. A repair is then added to that unique break, and as the owner continues to use the object over time, another layer of history is added.
So I do not believe that every crack needs to be highlighted with gold. What matters more to me is understanding what should be brought forward, what should remain quiet, and what feels most natural for that particular object.
In Europe kintsugi is often talked about as a metaphor for people and their scars. Working with the actual material every day, where do you think that comparison holds and where does it break down?
To be honest, having been born and raised in Japan, I grew up with the idea that it is natural to take care of things, to keep using them even if their function changes, and to accept that objects change over time. So when I first realised that, in Europe, kintsugi is often discussed as a metaphor for people and their scars, I was a little surprised.
If I am completely honest, I do not personally feel such a direct connection between kintsugi and human scars. Just as no two objects ever break in exactly the same way, no two people go through exactly the same experiences or carry them in exactly the same way. In that sense, I can see where the comparison comes from.
But I am not repairing an object in order to place my own ideas or personal story at the centre of it. Rather than giving kintsugi more meaning than it needs, I prefer to remain attentive and honest in my response to the object and the material in front of me.
What do customers say when they see the object for the first time, and how often is it not about the object at all?
In many cases, the person who brings me an object for repair is doing so not for themselves, but for someone important to them. So when they first see the finished piece, they are of course happy with the repair itself, but very often their thoughts immediately turn to the person who will receive it.
Through the object, they are also thinking about their relationship with someone important to them, and about the time they will continue to share.
A personal one: has this work changed how you look at the marks on your own things, or on yourself?
I would not say that this work has fundamentally changed the way I look at marks on my own things, or at changes in myself. What has changed me much more is making kintsugi my work, and doing that work under my own name.
After leaving Japan and living within a different culture, I realised that I did not necessarily need to add something in order to be different. Simply being myself was already distinctive in many ways. My black hair is a simple example. In Japan, it felt so ordinary that I barely thought about it. Now I see it as one of the elements that make me who I am, not something I need to change or erase.
At the same time, that does not mean I naturally accept every change in myself. I admire people with completely white hair and often think it looks beautiful and strong. But as my own hair begins to turn grey, I still find myself dyeing it because I am not yet completely comfortable with that stage of change.
Perhaps noticing those contradictions, what I can accept, what I want to preserve, and what I am still not ready to accept, is itself part of how my relationship with myself has changed.
Which repair took the longest to get right, and what kept sending you back to it?
There is one object that I have been keeping for almost three years now. I should say first that this is a very exceptional case in my work. If the goal had simply been to complete the repair, I think I could have finished it much earlier.
What has kept bringing me back to it is, above all, the depth of the owner’s attachment to the piece. There is something about the relationship between the presence the object already has and the lines created by the break that has never felt beautiful to me when repaired in a straightforward way.
Recently, I finally had a new idea that may allow me to take this object in a better direction. Three years ago, even if I had had the same idea, I do not think I would have had the technical ability to realise it.
What keeps bringing me back to this object is not simply the desire to finish it. It is the wish to reach a point where I can truly feel: this is right for this object.
Three things worth taking from this conversation.
First, the question she asks of a broken bowl is the one worth asking of any appearance: what makes this thing what it is, and will the repair respect it. Second, restraint. Not every crack needs gold. Whether a line is brought forward or left to sit quietly depends on the object, its history and the purpose of the repair, and a visible repair and an invisible one simply answer different questions. And third, her honesty about the metaphor. The person who mends breaks for a living does not think of people as bowls, and she still dyes her grey hair. Accepting change is not a slogan. It is slow, like urushi, and nobody gets to skip the curing time.
Tomoka Tsuchida practises kintsugi with natural urushi in Paris under the name Kintsugi Paris. Her work is at kintsugiparis.com and at instagram.com/kintsugiparis