Ju Ci: The Art of Repairing Porcelain

(thesublimeblog.org)

116 points | by lawrenceyan 4 days ago

6 comments

  • nickcw 1 day ago

    Wow - beautiful.

    I've mended a lot of porcelain and earthenware but I use the modern art of epoxy resin. The tricky bit is letting it set just enough so you can cut the excess off cleanly without smearing but not too much so you can't cut it all the while keeping it under enough tension.

    I like the string tensioning in the video - think I'll try that on my next mend. I normally use a set of small clamps but it is difficult to get them very tight.

    • numlocked 1 day ago

      I watched the video at the expecting one thing and finding something completely different. Remarkable — [0] watch the video in its entirety. Not what I thought when I read “staples to repair porcelain”.

      [0] intentional human use of an em-dash

      • interroboink 1 day ago

        For others interested, perhaps a more straightforward example is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGHkigtPcIA

        The one in the article is the same essential technique (structurally speaking), but with a lot more decorative flourish.

        • flyrain 1 day ago

          "intentional human use of an em-dash" LOL

          • johnea 1 day ago

            I still don't like them, human or pretend intelligence generated.

            Please use the correct punctuation for subclauses, the comma!

            However, I will give the comment author credit for _correctly_ surrounding the dash with spaces.

            This is my biggest bitch about the punctuation, it's used without spaces, making it indistinguishable from hyphenation.

            Written english is a space delimited language! The exception of the hyphen is to explicitly create one word by connecting several.

        • x13pixels 1 day ago

          Somewhat related is Kintsugi

          > Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with urushi lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintsugi

          • silisili 1 day ago

            The article mentions it -

            >> But Ju ci is more than a technique; like its close cousin, Kintsugi (the Japanese art of repairing broken ceramics using lacquer and gold), Ju ci embraces a profound philosophy: that of celebrating “beauty of the imperfect.”

            • IAmBroom 1 day ago

              And that philosophy is called "wabi-sabi" (which is a hella fun word to say):

              "Japanese aesthetic philosophy finding beauty in imperfection, transience, and incompleteness. Rooted in Zen Buddhism, it appreciates the natural cycle of growth and decay, valuing authenticity, rustic simplicity, and the patina of age over modern perfection. It encourages accepting flaws, such as cracks in pottery or weathered surfaces, as part of an object’s unique story.

            • dumb1224 1 day ago

              It used to be a lot of them roaming in the residential area, out of necessity since household items were precious. Related is also the profession of a tinker to mend woks and pots and the scissor sharpener https://donwagner.dk/tinkers/tinkers-Zhongwen.html

              Used to hear their shout in the street but largely disappeared in the 90s.

            • blacksmith_tb 1 day ago

              Beautiful work, but the cup can't hold water (or tea, or wine) now I assume? So a partial restoration. It does make me wonder if you could do a mechanical repair like that and then reglaze and refire it (but I suppose that'd melt most metalwork soft enough to hammer onto a delicate cup...)

            • fedeb95 1 day ago

              This practice also describes coding in legacy applications, but instead of a silver leaf you have // TODO: fix

              • johnea 1 day ago