The Journal of Australian Ceramics Vol 53 No 3 November 2014

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Focus: Collaboration
relationships to the objects, whether that be how they came to find the piece, or how it broke. These
37 stories were compiled into a catalogue that accompanied the exhibition.
Working with old rather than new, Kate Hill spent hours in her studio learning the material history
of each piece of worn pottery, noting the inside parts of clay unexposed to glaze or the firing process,
and the way that cracks re-join. She spent time with each piece, tracing fine lines and bringing parts
together and watched as old things reformed to become a new whole.
Along with this practical interaction with the pieces, Bree and Kate held conversations with artists
and pottery owners about their making of the piece or the relationship to the piece, and were therefore
able to consider the social history of each. The project became a myriad of conversations and sentiments
from people surrounding the objects. In the same way that the pottery pieces were brought together, so
were the people involved in this project. In a rare experience, artist and collector entered into the same
conversation and exhibited on the same platform. By sharing the stories between maker and collector,
this exhibition offers a melding of these often separate worlds.
'Please see the essay 'A Tearoom View of Mended Ceramics' by Christy Bartlett for further reading on
the Tearoom aesthetics of kintsugi.
http://mrkitly.com.au
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintsugi:
Kintsugi (Japanese: golden joinery) or Kintsukuroi (Japanese: golden repair) is the Japanese
art of fixing broken pottery with lacquer resin dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or
platinum, a method similar to the maki-e technique. As a philosophy it speaks to breakage and
repair becoming part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.
THE JOURNAL OF AUSTRALIAN CERAMICS NOVEMBER 2014 37