kintsukuroi

once the potter’s clay
the vase is already broken
perhaps by design  

kintsugi-david-pike.jpg

Kintsugi (金継ぎ, "golden joinery"), also known as Kintsukuroi (金繕い, "golden repair"),

is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum, a method similar to the maki-e technique.

As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.