The audio file for this article was produced by the Ceramic Arts Network staff and not read by the author.
Naoko Fukumaru began what would become a distinguished thirty-year career in the conservation and restoration of ceramics and glass with an internship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, followed by a staff position at the Detroit Institute of Art in Michigan. She went on to join conservation projects of masterpieces, including da Vinci’s The Last Supper, Rodin’s The Thinker, and Egypt’s Tomb of Tutankhamun. Then, in 2019, a personal crisis devastated her life. An abusive marriage left her broken in spirit, and she found herself taking refuge in a women’s shelter with her children.
At this moment of desolation, Fukumaru turned to the practice of kintsugi, the gold repair of ceramics, as a way to heal herself and begin again. With books sent by her father from Japan and drawing on her expertise in restoration, she retrained herself to become a kintsugi artist. She set aside the quiet, hidden repair of damaged ceramic art that is the practice of museum restoration for the boldly visible gold lines that highlight the repairs of kintsugi. Her experimentation with approaches to kintsugi became a personal journey as well as an artistic one. “In all of my artworks, you are witnessing my life and my evolution of healing.”
Embracing Ceramics at a Young Age
Fukumaru was born into a family that for generations had dealt in antique Japanese ceramics. At the beginning of the 20th century, Fukumaru’s great-grandfather, Shozaburo Fukumaru, began collecting broken ceramics and other damaged antiques, which he repaired and sold in his workshop in Kyoto, Japan. By 1912, this humble business had expanded to become Fukumaru Bijiyutsu Douguten, the antiques auction house that is still in the family today. During Fukumaru’s childhood, there was a constant flow of art objects between the auction house and the family home, and most of the dishes used at their dining table were cracked or chipped pieces that could not be sold. Fukumaru says she became attached to “these broken ceramics as if they were part of the family, part of my body.” Her connection to the world of the auction house was further amplified by growing up in Kyoto’s environment of temples, gardens, and thousand-year-old cultural traditions.
However, all of these advantages could not offset the oppressive side of being a female child in a conventional family living in a restrictively traditional society. When she was young, Fukumaru felt she was not valued in the way her brother was, and later, she saw there would be no place for her in the family auction house. At the age of nineteen, with little command of English, Fukumaru left Japan to undertake museum studies at West Dean College in Chichester, England, determined to establish her own identity. This was the beginning of a lengthy journey that would cross the US, Europe, and Egypt before ultimately leading Fukumaru to settle in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, where she embraced the practice of kintsugi.
Origin of Kintsugi
Kintsugi emerged in Japan around 500 years ago, following the growing interest in the tea ceremony and the desire to mend valuable pieces of ceramic tea ware. A return to an appreciation of rustic, folk pottery also reinforced the wabi aesthetic of imperfect and humble ceramics that accepted visible cracks and overt repairs. The kintsugi method of repairing ceramics, using the lacquer of the urushi tree as an adhesive, which is then dusted with gold powder to create irregular gold lines, is uniquely Japanese, although it later became widespread. Kintsugi repairs were first undertaken by maki-e artists, who were adept at using urushi and precious metal powders in their practice of making gold sprinkle pictures on objects covered with this unique lacquer.
Underlying kintsugi is a philosophical outlook influenced by Zen Buddhism that focuses on the impermanent nature of human endeavors. Clay objects hardened in the fire are subject to fracture. Kintsugi, the visible repair of that fracture, offers a way to respond to loss by shifting our idea of beauty from the perfect to the imperfect. “We are,” Fukumaru says, “finding beauty and strength from this brokenness.” Kintsugi also changes our view of a repaired piece of ceramic art in the way a lightning strike illuminates the landscape. The contours and the geography of the pot may appear quite different with the added highlights of gold lines. However, as important as practicing kintsugi has been to Fukumaru’s “journey of self-discovery,” she has been equally determined not to be bound by the past or limited by the “frame” of traditional kintsugi. “Art creation is my life, and I want to grow.”
Broken Reminders and an Imperfect Nature
Dreaming in the Blue is Fukumaru’s title for a piece of earthenware pottery from Kashan, which was a center of Persian ceramics from the 11th to the 14th centuries. Reaching well beyond her Japanese heritage, this Kashan pot reflects Fukumaru’s interest in selecting broken pots from a wide range of cultures and periods worldwide. Furthermore, in repairing the Kashan piece, Fukumaru used a translucent, museum-grade resin to join the broken pieces, rather than the permanent dark urushi join of traditional kintsugi. “Before I am a kintsugi artist, I am a conservator.” The adhesives Fukumaru uses to reassemble the shards of the pots and the application of materials to fill in cracks and chips are all reversible. For the Kashan piece, in addition to the mends that appear as small rivers of blue and gold flowing across the piece and tiny lakes surrounded by gold, Fukumaru has deliberately left two gaps at the center to allow the viewer to see the original clay body as an ongoing reminder of the broken, imperfect nature of the piece.
Fukumaru’s relationship to a pot begins the moment the fragments enter her studio. After she has stabilized the shards, they may sit on her shelf for a year or two while she considers the possibilities for repair, or she may begin work immediately. She says when she handles the broken pieces, she can feel the spirit of the potter, and she enters into a collaboration with them. “I can sometimes see the finger marks or some brushstrokes.” The original potter may have formed the clay when it was soft and malleable and the pieces Fukumaru takes hold of are hard and sharp, but her hands still contact the hands that went before her and learn from their journey with the clay. If she can, she studies the history of the potter and finds herself in imaginary conversations with them during the months it takes to complete the work. She “fought” with the prominent Japanese artist Rosanjin (1883–1959) about his temper and his impatience. But as she worked on repairing his bowl, she also became the friend she thought he needed, given his deeply scarred childhood. For the work on pieces made by Kanjiro Kawai (1890–1966), Fukumaru immersed herself in the atmosphere of Kawai’s house in Kyoto, which is now a small museum, where she could feel his presence.
While the first pieces Fukumaru repaired used only applications of gold lines and a marbling decoration achieved with lacquer and pigment, she soon decided to heighten the complexity of her designs through the addition of maki-e and its elaborate use of precious metals to create images. Although Fukumaru had taught herself the principles and techniques of kintsugi, she knew she must study maki-e with an expert. In 2023, she was awarded an Ishibashi Foundation/Japan Foundation fellowship which allowed her to incorporate the formal teachings of third-generation maki-e master Yutaro Shimode with her own freehand version of maki-e practice. “Once I master what they do,” Fukumaru says, “I’m able to use that in my art form. I love dynamic, natural beauty. When you go to watch a river, there is never the same straight line.”
Storytelling and Restoration
The importance of storytelling resonates throughout Fukumaru’s body of work, from the lyrical titles she gives the pieces, to the choices she makes about the nature of the repairs or where to leave gaps, to the additions of maki-e animals, plaster crystals, driftwood, shells, or thorns. And each broken piece already has an implied narrative of damage and survival built into its history before it comes into Fukumaru’s studio. The area of the work where the storytelling is most poignant is in the reclamation of kiln accidents, pieces that were deformed or broken in the kiln and then discarded. Fukumaru acknowledges her own personal identification with these pieces, which share the title, Born This Way or more starkly Born This Way–Unwanted. “This concept,” she says, “which had been simmering within me since I was a child, manifested as artwork in 2022 after I processed my past and emotional pain.” A number of the deformed pieces come from a 19th-century kiln site in Imari, Japan, noted for the production of refined porcelain. In the work titled Born This Way–Driftwood from 2023, a piece composed of broken and fused Imari porcelain cups repaired with gold is mounted on a piece of driftwood as if the two objects were thrown together in the storm, and yet they appear to shelter each other.
In her work as a kintsugi artist, Fukumaru holds the power to restore and give new life to a world of ceramic creation. Joining her abiding respect for the work of other artists with her own healing process, she has come to a new balance in her life. She can title a piece Born Unwanted, but she can also title a piece Dancing Through Life. The work she does has brought her the validation she seeks and has brought her a new relationship with her family. Through their roles at the auction house and their knowledge of antique ceramics, it is now her father and brother who find many of the remarkable pieces Fukumaru transforms into new works of art.
To learn more about Naoko Fukumaru and her work, visit naokofukumaru.com.
the author Stephanie Arnold writes about the theatre and ceramics, and also assists her husband, Mark Prieto, in his ceramics studio in Portland, Oregon. She is professor emerita of Theatre at Lewis & Clark College and the author of The Creative Spirit: An Introduction to Theatre.
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The audio file for this article was produced by the Ceramic Arts Network staff and not read by the author.
Naoko Fukumaru began what would become a distinguished thirty-year career in the conservation and restoration of ceramics and glass with an internship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, followed by a staff position at the Detroit Institute of Art in Michigan. She went on to join conservation projects of masterpieces, including da Vinci’s The Last Supper, Rodin’s The Thinker, and Egypt’s Tomb of Tutankhamun. Then, in 2019, a personal crisis devastated her life. An abusive marriage left her broken in spirit, and she found herself taking refuge in a women’s shelter with her children.
Embracing Ceramics at a Young Age
Fukumaru was born into a family that for generations had dealt in antique Japanese ceramics. At the beginning of the 20th century, Fukumaru’s great-grandfather, Shozaburo Fukumaru, began collecting broken ceramics and other damaged antiques, which he repaired and sold in his workshop in Kyoto, Japan. By 1912, this humble business had expanded to become Fukumaru Bijiyutsu Douguten, the antiques auction house that is still in the family today. During Fukumaru’s childhood, there was a constant flow of art objects between the auction house and the family home, and most of the dishes used at their dining table were cracked or chipped pieces that could not be sold. Fukumaru says she became attached to “these broken ceramics as if they were part of the family, part of my body.” Her connection to the world of the auction house was further amplified by growing up in Kyoto’s environment of temples, gardens, and thousand-year-old cultural traditions.
However, all of these advantages could not offset the oppressive side of being a female child in a conventional family living in a restrictively traditional society. When she was young, Fukumaru felt she was not valued in the way her brother was, and later, she saw there would be no place for her in the family auction house. At the age of nineteen, with little command of English, Fukumaru left Japan to undertake museum studies at West Dean College in Chichester, England, determined to establish her own identity. This was the beginning of a lengthy journey that would cross the US, Europe, and Egypt before ultimately leading Fukumaru to settle in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, where she embraced the practice of kintsugi.
Origin of Kintsugi
Kintsugi emerged in Japan around 500 years ago, following the growing interest in the tea ceremony and the desire to mend valuable pieces of ceramic tea ware. A return to an appreciation of rustic, folk pottery also reinforced the wabi aesthetic of imperfect and humble ceramics that accepted visible cracks and overt repairs. The kintsugi method of repairing ceramics, using the lacquer of the urushi tree as an adhesive, which is then dusted with gold powder to create irregular gold lines, is uniquely Japanese, although it later became widespread. Kintsugi repairs were first undertaken by maki-e artists, who were adept at using urushi and precious metal powders in their practice of making gold sprinkle pictures on objects covered with this unique lacquer.
Underlying kintsugi is a philosophical outlook influenced by Zen Buddhism that focuses on the impermanent nature of human endeavors. Clay objects hardened in the fire are subject to fracture. Kintsugi, the visible repair of that fracture, offers a way to respond to loss by shifting our idea of beauty from the perfect to the imperfect. “We are,” Fukumaru says, “finding beauty and strength from this brokenness.” Kintsugi also changes our view of a repaired piece of ceramic art in the way a lightning strike illuminates the landscape. The contours and the geography of the pot may appear quite different with the added highlights of gold lines. However, as important as practicing kintsugi has been to Fukumaru’s “journey of self-discovery,” she has been equally determined not to be bound by the past or limited by the “frame” of traditional kintsugi. “Art creation is my life, and I want to grow.”
Broken Reminders and an Imperfect Nature
Dreaming in the Blue is Fukumaru’s title for a piece of earthenware pottery from Kashan, which was a center of Persian ceramics from the 11th to the 14th centuries. Reaching well beyond her Japanese heritage, this Kashan pot reflects Fukumaru’s interest in selecting broken pots from a wide range of cultures and periods worldwide. Furthermore, in repairing the Kashan piece, Fukumaru used a translucent, museum-grade resin to join the broken pieces, rather than the permanent dark urushi join of traditional kintsugi. “Before I am a kintsugi artist, I am a conservator.” The adhesives Fukumaru uses to reassemble the shards of the pots and the application of materials to fill in cracks and chips are all reversible. For the Kashan piece, in addition to the mends that appear as small rivers of blue and gold flowing across the piece and tiny lakes surrounded by gold, Fukumaru has deliberately left two gaps at the center to allow the viewer to see the original clay body as an ongoing reminder of the broken, imperfect nature of the piece.
Fukumaru’s relationship to a pot begins the moment the fragments enter her studio. After she has stabilized the shards, they may sit on her shelf for a year or two while she considers the possibilities for repair, or she may begin work immediately. She says when she handles the broken pieces, she can feel the spirit of the potter, and she enters into a collaboration with them. “I can sometimes see the finger marks or some brushstrokes.” The original potter may have formed the clay when it was soft and malleable and the pieces Fukumaru takes hold of are hard and sharp, but her hands still contact the hands that went before her and learn from their journey with the clay. If she can, she studies the history of the potter and finds herself in imaginary conversations with them during the months it takes to complete the work. She “fought” with the prominent Japanese artist Rosanjin (1883–1959) about his temper and his impatience. But as she worked on repairing his bowl, she also became the friend she thought he needed, given his deeply scarred childhood. For the work on pieces made by Kanjiro Kawai (1890–1966), Fukumaru immersed herself in the atmosphere of Kawai’s house in Kyoto, which is now a small museum, where she could feel his presence.
While the first pieces Fukumaru repaired used only applications of gold lines and a marbling decoration achieved with lacquer and pigment, she soon decided to heighten the complexity of her designs through the addition of maki-e and its elaborate use of precious metals to create images. Although Fukumaru had taught herself the principles and techniques of kintsugi, she knew she must study maki-e with an expert. In 2023, she was awarded an Ishibashi Foundation/Japan Foundation fellowship which allowed her to incorporate the formal teachings of third-generation maki-e master Yutaro Shimode with her own freehand version of maki-e practice. “Once I master what they do,” Fukumaru says, “I’m able to use that in my art form. I love dynamic, natural beauty. When you go to watch a river, there is never the same straight line.”
Storytelling and Restoration
The importance of storytelling resonates throughout Fukumaru’s body of work, from the lyrical titles she gives the pieces, to the choices she makes about the nature of the repairs or where to leave gaps, to the additions of maki-e animals, plaster crystals, driftwood, shells, or thorns. And each broken piece already has an implied narrative of damage and survival built into its history before it comes into Fukumaru’s studio. The area of the work where the storytelling is most poignant is in the reclamation of kiln accidents, pieces that were deformed or broken in the kiln and then discarded. Fukumaru acknowledges her own personal identification with these pieces, which share the title, Born This Way or more starkly Born This Way–Unwanted. “This concept,” she says, “which had been simmering within me since I was a child, manifested as artwork in 2022 after I processed my past and emotional pain.” A number of the deformed pieces come from a 19th-century kiln site in Imari, Japan, noted for the production of refined porcelain. In the work titled Born This Way–Driftwood from 2023, a piece composed of broken and fused Imari porcelain cups repaired with gold is mounted on a piece of driftwood as if the two objects were thrown together in the storm, and yet they appear to shelter each other.
In her work as a kintsugi artist, Fukumaru holds the power to restore and give new life to a world of ceramic creation. Joining her abiding respect for the work of other artists with her own healing process, she has come to a new balance in her life. She can title a piece Born Unwanted, but she can also title a piece Dancing Through Life. The work she does has brought her the validation she seeks and has brought her a new relationship with her family. Through their roles at the auction house and their knowledge of antique ceramics, it is now her father and brother who find many of the remarkable pieces Fukumaru transforms into new works of art.
To learn more about Naoko Fukumaru and her work, visit naokofukumaru.com.
the author Stephanie Arnold writes about the theatre and ceramics, and also assists her husband, Mark Prieto, in his ceramics studio in Portland, Oregon. She is professor emerita of Theatre at Lewis & Clark College and the author of The Creative Spirit: An Introduction to Theatre.
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