Repairing a Hagi-yaki Teacup | Vol. 1

I am a company employee who works at a desk, but I study Kintsugi and lacquer art on my days off. Although it will be irregular, I would like to write about my days involving lacquer.

Kintsugi: Hagi-yaki Teacup (Cracks and Chips)

I have already finished up to the middle coating. The process so far is as follows:

1. Bonding with nori-urushi (paste lacquer).
The adhesives used for Kintsugi are mainly mugi-urushi (wheat lacquer) and nori-urushi, but at the class I currently attend, we use nori-urushi. My teacher mentioned that there might be regional differences. Instead of applying it to the entire surface, we apply it only to the center of the bonding surface and apply pressure when joining them. After it dries, we let raw lacquer soak into the gaps.

2. Filling gaps with sabi (rust lacquer).
Sabi is made by kneading tonoko (polishing powder) with water and mixing it with raw lacquer. We use it to fill in the gaps.
*For large gaps, sometimes mugi-urushi mixed with wood powder is used, but we do not use that in the class I attend.

3. Wet-sanding the sabi with waterproof sandpaper.
In lacquer work, the basic process is to repeat coating and sanding.
We sand it so that the bonded and filled areas become smooth.

4. Middle coating.
We apply black lacquer for the middle coating to the bonded areas and the areas filled with sabi.

5. Wet-sanding.
We repeat steps 4 and 5 until the surface is smooth.

This time, I started from here and applied a thicker layer of middle-coating lacquer to the slightly indented areas.

Next time, I hope to wet-sand it and be able to sprinkle the powder!