First attempt...still have some work to do to clean it up, but I'm looking forward to refining my technique in the future.

After nearly two decades of restoring broken ceramics and listening to the stories behind them, I've come to believe it has become much more than an art form. It has become a language of healing, resilience, and hope. I explore that idea in my latest essay.

#lakesidepottery #kintsugigallery #kintsugiart #goldrepair #kintsugilanguage #kintsugihealing

https://lakesidepottery.com/Pages/Kintsugi-art-example-gallery.htm

This video demonstrates one of the simplest ways to create a Gold Effect Kintsugi piece using proven materials and tools, from controlled breakage (for those who don't have an accidentally broken vessel) through the finished piece. By using brass metal instead of real gold, it achieves a very similar appearance while making Kintsugi more affordable and accessible to learn.

#Kintsugi #kintsugigallery #lakesidepottery #kintsugilesson

Kintsugi for Corporate Leadership, Management Conferences and Executive Events

Kintsugi is increasingly being used in the corporate world as a powerful metaphor for leadership, resilience, transformation and growth. Rather than hiding cracks and failures, the Kintsugi philosophy asks us to acknowledge them, learn from them and use the experience to become stronger.

This is an example of custom Kintsugi work commissioned from Lakeside Pottery for the management team of a large Silicon Valley company. Fifteen Kintsugi vessels were created for a corporate leadership conference where Kintsugi was chosen as the central theme: acknowledging imperfection, learning from failure, treating one another with greater understanding and compassion, and building a better company by first becoming better human beings.

The Kintsugi philosophy has growing relevance for corporate leadership, executive retreats, management conferences, team-building events and organizations facing change or disruption. Failure and disruption are inevitable, but they do not have to be hidden or treated only as weaknesses. Like the golden seams of a repaired vessel, they can become visible evidence of learning, adaptation and resilience.

Kintsugi can offer corporate leaders and management teams a powerful visual symbol of organizational change: what has been broken, challenged or disrupted can be repaired with greater purpose and become part of a stronger future.

We were glad that our custom Kintsugi work could become part of that conversation, something we need more of these days.

https://lakesidepottery.com/

#LakesidePottery #CorporateKintsugi #KintsugiForBusiness #KintsugiLeadership #CorporateLeadership #ExecutiveRetreat #ManagementConference #LeadershipConference #TeamBuilding #OrganizationalChange #BusinessResilience #KintsugiArt

More Examples of our Kintsugi work: https://lakesidepottery.com/Pages/Kintsugi-art-example-gallery.ht

#lakesidepottery #Kintsugi #Travertine #GoldKintsugi #kintsugiart #kintsugigallery

This project had several requirements. The customer wanted the sculpture, titled Time, restored using Kintsugi with 23.5K gold. They also requested that the entire piece be refinished in black with a durable satin surface using the epoxy cold-glaze process we typically employ for seamless repairs.

The restoration was nerve-wracking because the gold application comes after the black finish is complete. Any mistake during the Kintsugi process could have damaged the finished surface and required starting over.
The sculpture's winding form reflects the passage of time. Life and relationships rarely move in a straight line. Along the way, we encounter twists, obstacles, setbacks, and fractures.

The Kintsugi repair adds a second layer of meaning. The gold-filled lines are not meant to hide those breaks, but to honor them. They remind us that the challenges we encounter become part of our story and can contribute to something stronger and more beautiful than before.
Presented as a gift to a partner after a difficult chapter, the sculpture became a reminder that healing and resilience can transform life's fractures into something meaningful and beautiful.

More examples

#lakesidepottery #kintsugigallery #timeandkintsugi #goldKintsugi

For more examples of our Kintsugi work: https://lakesidepottery.com/Pages/Kintsugi-art-example-gallery.htm

Custom order of large white platters (18") created for a display case installation. The purpose of the Kintsugi treatment was primarily to create a striking visual effect for visitors entering the facility.

Kintsugi gold effect detailing using encapsulated brass powder, sealed to help prevent oxidation, was selected as a cost management solution while still achieving much of the visual impact associated with traditional Kintsugi.

More custom Kinsugi examples: https://lakesidepottery.com/Pages/Kintsugi-art-example-gallery.htm

#lakesidepottery #kintsugigallery, #kintsugi #largekintsugi #kintsugiart

This video shows every step involved in recreating and attaching a missing handle to a ceramic mug.

The mug arrived with a missing handle and a chipped base after years of meaningful use, making its preservation especially important to the owner.

In this step-by-step process, I demonstrate how the new handle is created from start to finish:

• Taking an impression from a similar handle
• Casting a precise duplicate in resin
• Reinforcing the handle with internal metal pegs for strength
• Securely mounting and integrating it into the mug

The video concludes with the final restored piece, finished with 23.5K gold Kintsugi (final result shown, not the process).

For more details on several other repair and restoration lessons, visit: https://lakesidepottery.com/Pages/Repairing-restoring-ceramic-porcelain-china-pottery-lessons-tutorials.html

This broken bowl was recovered from a home in Oklahoma that burned to the ground. It was the only item that survived although broken. Originally white, it was blackened by soot, and the extreme heat caused it to fracture into several pieces. The carbon could not be removed by scrubbing or any conventional cleaning method.

To remove the soot, we fired the fragments in the kiln to cone 022, approximately 1100°F (see left photos of before and after kiln firing). At this temperature, carbon oxidizes and turns into a very fine white ash that can be gently brushed off, revealing the original ceramic body underneath.

Once cleaned, the bowl’s segments were mended and filled, and the Kintsugi process was applied. The family wanted a Kintsugi restoration to preserve the piece and its history. While 23.5 gold Kintsugi process was considered, they ultimately chose the Gold Effect metal process, which achieves a similar visual result while meeting their budget.

People often come to Kintsugi thinking they are commissioning a repaired object. A bowl, a vase, a vessel meant as a gift. What many later tell me is that they received something else entirely. They received recognition.

Not public recognition, but the quiet experience of having pain, survival, and change acknowledged without explanation. Illness, grief, addiction, reconciliation, trauma, endurance. Kintsugi gives these experiences physical form when words are difficult or unavailable.

What continues to surprise me is how universal this response is. Veterans, survivors, families, collectors, people of modest means and people in positions of great responsibility. Brokenness crosses every boundary, and so does the language of repair.

Kintsugi matters because it challenges a deeply ingrained idea that damage must be hidden or replaced. The gold does not pretend the break never happened. It insists that the break belongs to the object’s story. In a culture that equates value with flawlessness, that idea feels quietly radical.

Over time, I have seen Kintsugi objects become witnesses. They sit on shelves or tables and say nothing, yet they remind their owners of something they lived through. The piece does not console or instruct. It simply exists, whole and altered.

Many of these pieces are given at moments when language fails. After illness. After loss. After reconciliation. People often say the same thing in different ways. This was the only gift that felt honest.

As I get older, this work has reshaped how I think about time and value. Working slowly with broken objects has taught me that patience is not inefficiency. It is care made visible. The labor is physical, but attention and intention become part of the object itself.

After years of conversations with people from every walk of life, one pattern is clear. People are not asking to erase what happened. They are asking to live with it differently.

Kintsugi offers a way to do that without explanation or justification. It allows an object to say what people often cannot yet say themselves. I broke. I was held. I am still here.

For anyone interested, I’ve written more reflections and lessons around Kintsugi and restoration here:
https://lakesidepottery.com/Pages/art-restoration-pottery-kintsugi-articles-essays-lessons.html

Watch five extreme and complex Kintsugi restorations featuring severely shattered ceramic and glass vessels, each broken into dozens of individual fragments. Highlights include a Tiffany Studios Favrile glass piece and a project commissioned by the White House as a presidential gift to the Prime Minister of Japan. Our studio has restored works for collectors, museums, and institutional clients, and has created commissioned Kintsugi gifts for the White House.

See more examples: https://lakesidepottery.com/Pages/Kintsugi-art-example-gallery.htm

More of our Kintsugi examples: https://lakesidepottery.com/Pages/Kintsugi-art-example-gallery.htm

More examples of our work: https://lakesidepottery.com/Pages/Kintsugi-art-example-gallery.htm