By Grant Drum
Kobe City, 2021 - 2024
Kintsugi is the art of repairing broken items with a dazzling mixture of gold and lacquer, in order to both repair the item but also bring and breathe newfound life into it, and it just so happens that Kellie Petruzzelli is a local JET alumni turned kintsugi artist, who is active in Portland, Oregon. With such an interesting former JET in our own backyard, I took some time back in June to sit down with her for an interview; to find out more about herself, her rather rare and special business, and to help get the word out!
Grant: Where did you go on JET and when?
Kellie: I was stationed in Takaoka, Toyama from 2009 to 2012. Way too long ago at this point!
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G: What grades did you teach?
K: I was primarily in high school, but I also had a second school where it was K through 12 but focused on students with special needs. Mostly it was a school for the deaf! I got to learn some Japanese sign language which was really fun, though I've forgotten a lot of it by now haha!
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G: What were some of your go-to spots in Takaoka?
K: Oh, good question. Like I said I was stationed in Takaoka, which is like the second biggest city in Toyama, but don't quote me on that. It was kind of interesting because there was really a big Brazilian population in Toyama. The JETs in Takaoka in particular, we hung out with the Brazilian population a lot. So there were a few Brazilian hot spots there. There was like an amazing Brazilian restaraunt that was also kind of like a community center that we used to hang out there quite a bit.
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G: So how did you originally get into kintsugi?
K: So I took a bunch of different art classes while I was there to start. I really liked ikebana. I liked calligraphy too but I was really bad at it. I took a few others too but eventually I found and realized I love kintsugi. I've always been interested in pottery too, but I've tried it a few times myself and I am dismal at it. In fact I once took a six week pottery class and despite that I absolutely loved it. Kintsugi in a way combines things I like about pottery with the sort of "mottainai" mindset that I like and that was especially prevalent living out in the inaka. We leaned more towards taking care of what you have, keeping things, and restoring them.
And me personally, I really love that. So I continued to practice it while I was there. It's kind of funny because I think what I've sort of realized about myself is that I'm not good at producing something from nothing. But I AM really good at like, working off of something. I actually was an editor for years and years and I was like 'That kind of tracks'. For example I may not be a good writer, but if you give me something, I can polish it.
When I came back to the U.S. I sort of fell off of it for a few years but had my interest reignited through a class here led by someone named Emmy Joyce. She encouraged me to take commissions at least to make up for the cost of materials. At the time I had just been doing my own pieces or for friends and family, but from there I started Kin and Kuro and also started taking commissions.
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G: What do you like so much about kintsugi?
K: So I do traditional kintsugi so I use traditional urushi lacquer instead of like an epoxy or something like that. I've done epoxy, I just don't like it. What I like about traditional kintsugi is that it takes a while. Like, it takes weeks to months to do a piece because each stage has to cure. For a cracked plate for example, there's at least six stages minimum. I have always been really drawn to things that take a while too; things that are just really slow and methodical. Things like crochet and embroidery.
G: It sounds very detail oriented.
K: I remember one time, when I was taking Emmy's class, I was asking about the composition of the materials, because basically what you do is mixing the urushi lacquer with different materials at different stages and different ratios. I asked Emmy, basically, "If you're not sure, is it better to have it be too liquidy or too thick?". She responds "It's better for it to be perfect." and I was like "Got it." At the time I was like, really? But now no, it is kind of one of those arts where it has a little bit of variation but really comes down to extreme precision.
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G: Do you have to get/order most of your materials from Japan? How much does that cost?
K: Yeah so luckily all the tools and everything I can purchase online from Japan, and I have a particular store after trying out a few different ones. You can't really buy any of the gold powder OR the lacquer in America. Some of the other things you can kind of find here, or like American equivalents; for better or for worse. But with urushi for example, because it oxidizes you can't stock up too much if you're not going to use it. Probably costs me between around $500 and $1000 each time though, buying around three times a year. The price of gold has skyrocketed too, so even just a gram of that is like $250?
G: Your next business here might be investing in gold then.
K: I have an alert setup, truly, to track the price of gold. So occasionally I'm like "Oh gotta buy gold now!"
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G: How long is your waitlist?
K: Right now it's about eight months, which is wild. There's a few kintsugi artists in Portland, some like Emmy have been doing it for quite a while, and then there's also a couple of newbies. I'm somewhere in the middle. And we all work in very different ways. I tend to work in batches for example, so everything in once batch is more or less on the same stage of development. Some folks just kind of do things whenever and that's too chaotic for me. I can't handle it, I need a structure. So I tend to work in batches as a result and with the whole kintsugi process and the time it takes, that's why the waitlist is the length that it is.
G: So how long dows it take to do just one batch? Just a few months roughly?
K: I would say about two months with like an additional two weeks of cure time. So maybe about three months roughly.
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G: Are there any favorite pieces you've worked on?
K: Ooh, it's always kind of about the story behind it. You know what I mean? Like nine times out of ten, if someone is gonna spend money to have something fixed like this, it's gonna be something with a lot of sentimental value. There's one piece I just finished, and the story behind it is so sweet. It's actually the plate of a friend of the client. A handmade pie plate she bought in Seattle and the two have been friends for decades now. Well when she was bringing a pie over one day she ended up dropping it on the road, breaking it and leaving her devastated. Didn't stop her from bringing the pieces back together and giving them to me to have it repaired!
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G: Here's a good question for those possibly looking to get something from you. Are your kintsugi'd items dishwasher safe?
K: They are not.
G: I had a feeling, how about microwave safe?
K: One time I accidentally put one in the microwave. It didn't melt but it like sparked, and the gold turned black. Thankfully I caught it immediately. You live and you learn. So, it's not dishwasher safe, not microwave safe, and it cannot be soaked. But it is food safe, depending on how you finish it.
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G: What is like the smallest piece you've worked on? Or the biggest piece?
K: Biggest piece is one I'm working on right now, with a giant platter about... maybe fourteen inches? And it was purchased in Thailand during the customer's honeymoon. It has a couple of cracks in it that I'm fixing for him. And then the smallest one... actually, it's one of my own. I have this little, tiny, sake cup that I cracked clean in half and I repaired that one too. And in terms of pricing, the cheapest I've done is probably about $80 and the most expensive probably being about $700.
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G: Is there any particular kind of piece you'd like to try? Something you've seen that causes you to go like "Man, I wish somebody would break that and bring it to me,"?
K: Ooh, that's a good one. A lot of the pieces I get are Japanese in origin, which makes a lot of sense and that's great, I love that. But I actually also really love British porcelain. Like China. There was actually a large group of JETs from the UK in Toyama as it happens too. But I just love their history of like, teaware. So I love it when I get something like that, cause it reminds me of those friends and if there was another country that I would ever want to move to at this point too it's actually the UK.
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If you have anything broken that you'd enjoy seeing made glittering whole again, or just have plenty more questions and the like for Kellie, please find her website and also her Instagram linked below. Extremely grateful to Kellie for taking the time out of her busy schedule to meet and talk with me, be sure to at least check out some of her works and more details at the links below. Thank you!
https://www.kin-kuro.com/
https://www.instagram.com/kinkuro.kintsugi/