24K Gold Kintsugi Ko-Imari Plate | A Break in the Clouds

Clouds in Export Blue Ko-Imari porcelain dates to Japan's export age, when kilns around Arita shipped blue-and-white wares to Europe through the port of Imari. Its sometsuke designs often covered entire surfaces with cobalt-blue motifs, accented with gold over the glaze. This plate carries that tradition in swirling cloud motifs traced with fine gold around the well, with a red seal-script character at the center. Rebuilt in Urushi, Finished in Gold Over four months, Saki Moriyama restored this broken plate. A lacquer artist who holds a Master's degree in Lacquer Arts from Kyoto City University of Arts, she completed Kyoto's successor program in urushi craft and has taught kintsugi workshops. She rejoined the fragments, filled the damaged areas, and built a smooth, cured foundation with food-safe natural urushi. She then sprinkled 24K marufun (spherical gold powder) over the restored areas in the maki-e manner and sealed it with a thin coat of raw urushi to form one durable layer. Roiro, the final hand-polishing, demands exceptional control of pressure and patience, and it is this stage that gives the gold its rich, deep luster. Two Expressions of Gold This plate carried gold from the outset: fine overglaze gilding around the cobalt clouds, a detail often found on Arita's export ware. The 24K gold of the kintsugi, laid in urushi and polished through roiro, is broader and deeper, and seen together the two distinguish the porcelain gilder's work from the lacquer artist's. Food-safe, the plate can be used or hung for display. Moriyama's kintsugi runs in parallel with the urushi work she exhibits as an artist, and a plate that joins a collection abroad carries that work with it: the Imari porcelain, the urushi story on it, and the months she gave to both.