Wabi- Sabi & Momento Mori

How philosophies of impermanence can shape your creative practice

Our cultural relationship to old and broken things in the western world is a complicated one. We both fear and revere the concept of aging. We dislike change. Cling to youth. Try to imagine that things can remain static. That we will always retain our mobility. The idea of adapting to deterioration or decay is a frightening one for many of us. Perhaps the uncertainty drives us into a state of semi-paralysis. Better to live in the now and not face the inevitable truth… that change comes for us all. That’s right, even you and I.

Your life is kind of falling apart - and that’s the point.

I started to closely examine this concept back when running my own antiques shop many moons ago. It had a very particular angle, this shop. We sold things, yes, but there was a specific theme running through every carefully curated object. I collected oddities. Usually with a bit of a sense of humour, a bit of tongue-in-cheekness. I would display old Victorian taxidermy with 1940s Oddfellows paraphernalia. We once had a full-sized Masonic coffin in the shop, dark wood with a lift-off lid, and gold trim. I had a collection of funerary photos from the past century taken in various countries, usually mounted on a thick card. Something always attracted me to these weird and sometimes morbid curiosities. And I finally figured out what the connective tissue was between all these objects… they all dealt with the theme of impermanence in one way or another.

As I get older, and my repair practice deepens, I gain deeper respect for impermanence. How it shapes our bodies and our most precious objects. I have two favourite cultural touchstones when it comes to impermanence. Two seemingly unrelated ideas that migrate more and more closely in my mind the more that I consider each. The Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, and the Victorian practice of momento mori. I’m here to offer a little interpretation of each of these concepts, how they relate to each other, and most importantly how they can positively impact your creative practice.

MOMENTO MORI - we all will pass.

Sure, seemingly grim, but true.

Memento mori, Latin for “remember you must die,” refers to symbolic reminders of mortality that encourage reflection on life’s impermanence. While the concept dates back to ancient Rome and was embraced by medieval Christianity, it became deeply personal in the Victorian era, shaped by high mortality rates and elaborate mourning customs. Victorians expressed memento mori through art, craft, and fashion—such as post-mortem photography, mourning wreaths made with the hair of the deceased, painted death portraits, and black-enamel or jet adornments featuring skulls or urns. These objects served both as tokens of grief and as tangible connections to lost loved ones.

WABI-SABI - we all will change.

Yep. If you need proof, just tally your grey hairs.

Wabi-sabi is a Japanese aesthetic philosophy rooted in Zen Buddhism that embraces imperfection, impermanence, and the quiet beauty of natural aging. This philosophy finds expression across traditional art, architecture, and gardening. Kintsugi, as we know, highlights flaws rather than hiding them. While raku ware, with its irregular shapes and earthy textures, embodies wabi-sabi’s embrace of the handmade and unpredictable. In architecture, traditional tea houses feature weathered wood and simple, asymmetrical design, creating spaces that invite reflection. Japanese Karesansui gardens also reflect wabi-sabi through moss-covered stones, aged lanterns, and dry rock arrangements, all of which celebrate the passage of time and the beauty of imperfection.

So how do these culturally different concepts relate?

Though rooted in different cultures, memento mori and wabi-sabi share a deep philosophical kinship, both encouraging reflection on the impermanence of life. Memento mori reminds us of mortality, urging us to live meaningfully in the face of inevitable death, while wabi-sabi invites us to find quiet beauty in the aged, worn, and imperfect. Both philosophies foster mindfulness—memento mori through confronting loss and time, and wabi-sabi through embracing the fleeting and incomplete. They reject excess in favour of simplicity and authenticity, and each encourages emotional depth: one through grief and remembrance, the other through gentle acceptance of transience. Ultimately, they both offer ways to find grace and meaning in life’s fragility. Here are a few helpful ways in which these philosophies can guide your creative practice…

Acceptance of Impermanence

Both philosophies remind us that nothing lasts forever—memento mori through the inevitability of death, and wabi-sabi through the natural aging and decay of all things. So slowing down and noticing things as they are can be invaluable to you as a creative. Not only will you change, but your favourite things will change. Your favourite bowl will break (like mine did last week), your jeans will rip through overwear, even your favourite coffee shop will close their doors forever someday.

Nothing gold can stay, as the saying goes.

And isn’t it a little bit liberating to begin to see this fleetingness as not only a bug but a feature of living a whole creative life? The realisation that almost nothing will retain its glow forever can help spur you on to experiment, and perhaps play more. Not taking yourself too seriously in the pursuit of creation and craft is the key to success, in my opinion.

Mindfulness and Presence

Each encourages living with awareness and appreciation. Memento mori urges us to value life because it is fleeting, while wabi-sabi invites us to notice and cherish the beauty in the everyday and slightly wonky. These days, we are all on autopilot at least some of the time, if not most of the time. Demands on our attention are plentiful, and relentless. It’s a major win against the strong forces of technology to simply ‘be’ with a practice, whether its cooking, painting, kintsugi repair or writing.

There is a spiritual element to getting still.

To many people stillness is uncomfortably close to boredom. Turning inwards can feel a bit scary when you first practice it. The quietness can feel like staring down into a cavernous void. But when you allow a little bit of boredom to creep in, that’s where the magic happens. Your thoughts, visions and the things you’ve seen have the necessary space to absorb. When do we allow ourselves to be bored these days? I argue that it’s one of our most potent secret weapons, and it’s one that we don’t deploy nearly often enough.

Simplicity.

Wabi-sabi values simplicity and authenticity in form and material, while memento mori often uses humble symbols (like skulls or wilted flowers) to convey deep, universal truths. We can always pare down our process, and materials, and sometimes the best results when working come from restricting the available materials to the bare essentials. When I’m truly stumped, or burnt out in the studio, I will often take myself through a practice of limiting myself to one or two basic materials. One colour of paint or ink, for instance. It’s amazing the results you can get with just the basics, and your mind will sigh with relief when the overwhelming number of options are removed. Wabi-sabi in particular can be a potent reminder of the need to slow down, and use what you have available in the moment.

Beauty in Imperfection

Memento mori accepts the reality of decline and death as part of life’s beauty. Wabi-sabi similarly sees cracks, wear, and irregularity as marks of character and meaning. This is of course, the core philosophical principal which draws people into the practice of kintsugi repair in the first place. Aside from craftsmanship, it’s probably the most cited reason people visit our repair workshops. Finding meaning within your creative projects can help you expand your practice. but remember that the beauty isn’t simply in perfecting the end result, but in the quirks that naturally arise in the process.

In the end, both memento mori and wabi-sabi offer us more than just aesthetic frameworks, they’re invitations to embrace the strange, beautiful, unraveling nature of being alive. They remind us that things crack, fade, fray, and occasionally go wildly off course.

That’s not a flaw in the system, it is the system.

In your creative life, this might look like embracing the lopsided, the chipped, or the idea that your best work sometimes occurs when you’re covered in glue and somewhat questioning your choices. But that’s where the good stuff lives- in the imperfections, in the showing up, in the quiet acceptance that nothing (and no one) stays the same.

So here’s to making peace with impermanence, and maybe even finding a little joy in the mess.

Love,

T.S.C.