London Craft Week 2022: Repair and Heal at Wagumi

Wagumi, our tenant at Oxo Tower Wharf, is offering two series of workshops for London Craft Week 2022. These workshops are the Kintsugi workshops and the Incense-making workshop.

The Kintsugi workshop gives broken ceramics a beautiful afterlife. It is a process that uses lacquer, sealants and metal powder to trace the lines of a breakage, and create something new. More than a simple act of restoration, kintsugi makes a feature of the cracks formed in a moment of chance. This touches on classic concepts in the Japanese decorative arts, such as the impermanence of things, and beauty in imperfection.

Kintsugi practitioner Iku Nishikawa leads the workshops, and is able to instruct in the principles and techniques of kintsugi. Held in small groups, the workshops offer an accessible introduction to the methods of ceramic repair. Including some shortcuts, the sessions are intended as an entry point to a deeper art. The format allows for participants to work on Japanese ceramic fragments, that they are then able to keep. Unfortunately, in the timeframe, it is not possible for participants to bring their own ceramics to the workshop to mend.

An image of someone painting brass powder on a Kintsugi ceramic.

An image of a small ceramic featuring a painting of a goldfish.

Incense in the air provides a classic smell of Japan when it is present at temples, shrines, and simply to light the home. Japan has a lively industry in scent, with many small and medium-sized companies working on their own variations of perfumed wood sticks.

The incense-making workshop will be a collaboration with Kunjudo, a traditional maker of incense based on the island of Awaji in the Japanese inland sea.

Using a pestle and mortar participants will be able to build their own scent and colour combinations, make their own incense and take home the output of their work. The workshop will last approximately 45 minutes and will include an introduction to incense, and instruction from Wagumi staff on the process of creation. While informative on an element within Japanese craft and culture, the workshops will also be fun and accessible to almost any age group.

The workshop timetable is as follows:

Kintsugi workshops: