Intermediate kintsugi

I have been working for months developing a short day course that would finally introduce people to traditional kintsugi repair fundamentals. Something that would give you the opportunity to complete a whole traditional hybrid kintsugi repair in one day, while understanding the fundamentals of how to work with traditional repairs at home. That’s why our freshly launched Intermediate Kintsugi Workshop is my obvious first choice for this months highlight reel. This feels like such an exciting and big step for the studio and for me personally. I am navigating the waters of perfectionism and imposter syndrome to bring our little kintsugi and repair community something special, and its worth every drop of sweat.

Yee Sook Yung

The work of Yee Sook YUNG has been really holding my attention at the studio lately. As I work to develop new special sessions for later in the year, her sculpture keeps creeping into my subconscious. There are several notable artists working around the edges of the kintsugi repair tradition, and creating an interesting body of work around it. I think I will do a separate blog post about modern kintsugi sculpture another day. But Yung’s work is so round and surreal that I just can’t help but think it would be amazing inspiration for a class where freewheeling repair and reclamation of broken fragments would really sing.

Art openings

There are two openings I can’t stop thinking about from this past month. My background is in fine art, and if I don’t paint or draw for long periods, I get extremely itchy. Seeing these two friends openings in London this past month got my painting fingers twitching. The first is Brittany Sheppard’s small but high-impact show at Mammoth gallery in Fitzrovia. Lush still lives of wrapped and unwrapped latex, gloved hands, and masked intruders. There is something meditative and unsettling about these little vignettes you really need to see in person. And the second show to pop into is Stephen Appleby-Barr’s incredible exhibit at Robilant+Voena gallery in Mayfair. Not only is the space stunning, but it is the perfect showroom for this new series of spacey-dreamy paintings, which are a blend of allegory, still-life from sculpture and fairytale. There is a beautiful film to go with the exhibit here.

Transient seasons

Each place seems to have their special season. Much like blossom season in Kyoto (Late-March to early- April) or tulip season in the Dutch countryside (March to May) or New England autumn foliage (September to October), London has its own cadence of growth and death. I would like to submit blossom season in London for everyone’s consideration. Now that we are mostly on the other side of it, I can reflect on that feeling when everything in our north London neighbourhood seems to be exploding with puffy white and pink blossoms. This period of a few weeks make life feel absolutely brimming with possibility.

Clerkenwell Design Week

I was fortunate enough to be asked by design company Arper to participate in their festivites for Clerkenwell Design week this year by hosting two days of workshops in their gorgeous showroom in the heart of Clerkenwell. Now, I don’t say this lightly, but when I say that Arper is truly a joy to collaborate with, I am not being hyperbolic. You can just tell when a company has great culture. Everyone brims with warmth and relaxed spirit. I loved their attention to detail, not to mention the company ethos of sustainability (check out their chair fabricated out of compressed paper, its pretty genius) Guys, I am not in any way being compensated for saying any of this, I just think you deserve to know when a company is good. After my first day of workshops, I was able to hop over to Charterhouse Square to see the insane Alex Chinneck installation of a wobbly Georgian house front, and had my mind a little bit blown.

Slow Social Media

I don’t know about you, but I’m a little bit sick of feeling like a slave to all the different media accounts we are beholden to these days. I just heard the term ‘slowmaxxing’ (i’m pretty sure i’m years behind this trend, and frankly I feel like that fits perfectly) so that is now what I am all about. Taking extra time and care to do anything and everything as much as I possibly can. In that spirit, I have been working on making sure that I am producing slower content on our instagram. We have a tiny following on there, and I am grateful to everyone who keeps up with us. But I want to make sure that everything going up on there holds some value for you. So I am just recommitting to taking things slow, not feeling rushed or panicky. Not feeling the need to post just because its a specific day of the week, but making sure that whatever is going out there is going to at least inform or entertain you.

Portugal

Im a bit of a homebody. Or maybe more accurately, a studio-body. The studio is where I feel most grounded, and I love to be closest to the things that facilitate good work. But when the last-minute opportunity popped up to stay in a 15th century convent in the Portuguese countryside, you better believe I went. Was it stunningly restored? Yes. Was it massive? You bet. Did I get lost? Totally. But the highlight of this mini mid-week break with my dad and sister was without a doubt, the chapel. I have never stayed in a hotel with an on-site chapel before, and yes, I did a little snooping behind the alter to see what was holding everything together. Like with most things, the gilded exterior had a lot of hidden scaffolding behind it.

Fermented chilli eggs

There is not a lot I need to say here, other than that the fermented chilli eggs offered at Ozone Coffee (if I had to choose a location, I would say the London Fields one) is worth writing about for me this month. Maybe I was just very relaxed last time I was there, but I look forward to this little treat any time I need to do some work out in the wild. Whatever the oil is they use might be infused with drugs, but I dream about this dish weekly.

Hand-made materials

Ahead of our Intermediate workshops, I’m learning something brand new, and my god I hope it goes well. If my current experiments go according to plan, I will be offering our very own studio blend of bengara urushi for finishing! This is the red urushi layer applied before your application of gold, bronze or silver. Now, I have no idea if this new blend will work, but I am really excited and a little scared to try it. I’m putting it out there into the ether in the hopes that the net will materialise if I just jump. So wish me luck.

In Praise of Shadows

This is a thin little snack of a book that needs revisiting often. If you are feeling rushed in life, if you feel that you have all the ideas, but not a lot of time, this is your sign to pick up this essay. There is a zen saying that ‘if you don’t have time to meditate for 10 minutes, you should mediate for 20 minutes’ The idea behind this cheeky aphorism is that meditation clears a path towards seeing, and actually can create more space if you sit in it. You can see more clearly what is significant and what is not. In Praise of Shadows is a meditation on noticing, and then noticing deeper by the author Jun'ichirō Tanizaki. If you are a lover of the key principals of wabi-sabi and kintsugi (imperfection, nuance, patina, age) this tiny book is a staple for your collection.

Until next month…

Love,

Cody

T.S.C.

10 things that made me slow down this month