Appropriate In Some Circumstances

I read Rain Noe’s article “An Architectural-Scale Kintsugi Project” with some interest. Kintsugi is the art of repairing broken pottery with joints that deliberately contrast against the base material in appearance, leaving visible scars in the repair. Repair work (right) on Mishima ware hakeme-type tea bowl with kintsugi gold lacquer, 16th century, by Daderot Noe is using the term for a proposal to repair a badly damaged 257-year-old house in Virginia. It seems from his description that, prior to restoration work beginning in 2020, all that was left were pieces of the four exterior walls – notably missing about half of the front facade – and less than half of the roof. The overall proposal is to rebuild the missing walls in glass. It’s not entirely clear from the renderings what is planned with the missing floor area, although it looks like it might be a combination of modern flooring and glass. To get the obvious out of the way, this is not traditional restoration and makes no…