Kintsugi in Gold: Lakeside Pottery Studio
Broken pottery, Genuine Gold, and a repair that refuses to hide itself. Meet the studio putting our Genuine Gold to work.
Most of our Genuine Gold ends up on picture frames, signage and architectural detail. Some of it ends up somewhere less expected: along the fracture lines of a shattered bowl. Lakeside Pottery Studio has been practicing Kintsugi — the Japanese art of mending ceramics with Gold — since 2001, and we are proud that their work is finished with Genuine Gold from Easy Leaf Products.
Video courtesy of Lakeside Pottery Studio.
What is Kintsugi?
Kintsugi (金継ぎ), also called kintsukuroi, translates as “golden joinery” or “to repair with Gold.” Where a Western restorer traditionally works to make damage disappear, Kintsugi does the opposite: the break is rejoined and then deliberately traced in Gold, so the object’s history becomes the most visible thing about it. Lakeside’s gallery of finished Kintsugi pieces shows how varied that can look, from a single hairline seam to a vessel mapped with dozens of gold veins.
The practice dates to 15th-century Japan and is bound up with wabi-sabi, the aesthetic that finds beauty in imperfection, age and wear. A repaired piece is not considered diminished. It is considered finished — often more valuable, and certainly more interesting, than it was before it broke.
Classically, the seams are bonded with urushi lacquer and dusted with Genuine Gold Powder, a process that can take weeks of curing between coats. Contemporary studios like Lakeside work with modern adhesives and Genuine Gold Powder, which gives a comparable finish with far greater control over line width and durability — and makes the technique practical for pieces that clients want to display and handle. Their Kintsugi questions and answers page is a good starting point if you want the detail on how a repair is actually built up, and finished pieces are available directly from their Kintsugi shop.
Meet Lakeside Pottery Studio
Founded in 2001 and based in Delaware, Lakeside Pottery Studio is a nationally recognized ceramic art and 3-D restoration studio led by Morty and Patty Bachar. Alongside Kintsugi, they handle pottery, china and porcelain restoration as well as sculpture and statuary repair in stone, plaster, resin and metal, for private collectors, galleries and museums across the US and Canada.
Their work ranges from a family heirloom knocked off a shelf to a 1,000-year-old Chancay effigy jar — and, in 2024, a Kintsugi vase commissioned as a White House gift to the Prime Minister of Japan. The studio also runs one of the most generous free learning libraries in the field, with step-by-step Kintsugi and repair tutorials used by artists and educators worldwide.
At a glance
- Operating since 2001
- Delaware, USA — nationwide mail-in service
- Ceramic, stone, metal, plaster & resin restoration
- Custom Kintsugi made to order, plus gallery pieces for sale
- Free online tutorials and lessons