In a world that so often prizes youth, perfection and excess, embracing the old and battered may seem strange. But the 15th-Century practice of kintsugi, meaning “to join with gold”, is a reminder to stay optimistic when things fall apart and to celebrate the flaws and missteps of life.
-Terushi Sho, for BBC Travel
The Lupaca Bone Quena, post kintsugi, close up.
Since my early childhood, I’ve had a strong bond with scarred things. When I sew my torn clothing, I like to use threads and stitches that stand out. When I fix my broken things, I always love to do so with quality craftsmanship that carries a signature…ok sometimes I’ll replace craftsmanship with ingenuity and run with it…but at least there’s an ethos. Anyway last year I saw a meme about kintsugi and was like, holy shit that’s me!
Screenshot from traditionalkyoto.com
I left the Lupaca in my car overnight, played it for 20 minutes or so this morning, then set it down for a few, picked it up again and could not make a sound no matter how hard I tried. It honestly took me something like 10 minutes of trying to figure out the problem with my technique before I finally examined the body of the flute, but sometime shortly after I’d set it down, it must have just popped!
The picture above, a screen shot from the video I was shooting at the time, is all I have for a before shot. I was so excited to come up with a plan and do the repair I just didn’t even think of it.
Anyway, my bone quena splitting, likely due to thermal expansion, I knew right away would be a perfect opportunity to add a kintsugi-style approach to my repair style. I apologize, I was not thinking about posting when I did this, so I got busy and took almost no pictures.
Next I soaked a q-tip in super glue, dipped it in the brass dust, and pressed/brushed it into the cracks, allowing it all to dry for a few hours.
Once it had fully dried, I sanded it with a high grit count paper, then wiped it down with one more blast of rubbing alcohol - and voila!
If you look at it from a normal distance, say, arm’s length, it just looks black. I think this is really cool. In this way it looks like something I would have always done, but then it also hides a secret treasure!
In the closeups above and at the top, you can see that, when observed closely, the old cracks’ black filling is actually as beautiful little micro-lode of brass flecks - but it’s beauty is only shown to those who look for it ;)
Finally, I couldn’t resist the urge. Now that I had a flute that already had my fingerprint forever stamped upon it, I decided it was finally time to see how the laser engraver does on the round body of a flute - I think it came out looking pretty cool:
The Japanese characters on either side of the bird (should) say kintsugi…a lot like a dog named dog I guess, but still it looks cool :)
Anyway, thanks for checking out some more of my work! As always, I hope you enjoyed witnessing as much as I enjoyed creating!
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For a table of all posts related to this quena (at the time of writing, this is the only one), check out the Lupaca Bone Quena Post Inventory.
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Here you’ll find links to various post-groupings, so you can find all posts related to a specific topic quickly. Topics include lists of brewing recipes, different flutes, rucking posts and an index of all acoustic covers. The lists are updated as new content is added, so they can always be used to quickly navigate my content.
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