When this ceramic bowl broke, instead of being discarded, it was beautifully repaired using an adhesive or lacquer infused with powdered gold. This repair technique is Japanese, and known as ‘kintsugi’. The break lines are highlighted rather than camouflaged, serving to demonstrate the bowl’s importance to its owner. The changed appearance becomes part of it’s history as a functional object. I didn’t learn of kintsugi until some years after I posted about a wonderful exhibition Mike and I saw in Paris in 2007, at the Musee du Quai Branly. Rewording a bit, I’m going to write about Objets Blesses: la reparacion en afrique again here – because it made a huge impact on me. Unforgettable.

The title of the exhibition translates literally as “injured objects” which of course they were: they were broken and then repaired. On show were artifacts collected in several African countries by French colonists, traders, missionaries and explorers. Made from many different materials – wood, iron, precious metals, ceramic, leather, stone – every object in the exhibition had been repaired. None of the objects blesses were repaired using the kintsugi approach of course, but the array of repair techniques was fascinating – apart from images of pieces in the exhibition here on this page I found a wonderful Pinterest board here that I’ve been following for a while.

An impressive array of techniques were used in these repairs, and despite the mending process changing each object’s appearance, these repairs had all restored usefulness of these valued household tools and vessels, weapons, and religious and ceremonial objects symbolising community offices and powers.

My grandparents survived the Great Depression, where millions of people lost everything suddenly or gradually, and had to mend, make do or go without. Our parents lived with severe shortages and rationing of everything during World War 2. Inevitably, we baby-boomers were ingrained with the values of mending and making do, wearing something out before throwing it out. Thrift was necessary and virtuous. Today, with over 7.5billion people needing, expecting or requiring stuff, all imposing huge stresses on the Earth’s resources, at last there are signs that many people are making real efforts to avoid unnecessary wastage of the planet’s resources by recycling, upcycling and repurposing, though there’s so much more to be done and practiced daily.

One sad reality in the western world is that so much stuff we use cannot just simply be repaired at home if it breaks, and often can’t be affordably fixed by a qualified repair person, either, making it often much cheaper to just buy a replacement for the broken thing. Lots of footwear comes into this category, though I nearly always buy leather, which does last and is nearly always repairable. Of course, worst of all are electrical appliances and digital things like phones and TVs which feature built-in obsolescence, and we suffer frequent model changes that ensure that parts quickly become unavailable. Because of my upbringing this sticks in my throat.

Until I saw this really impressive exhibition, I hadn’t given any real thought to the activity of repairing something. But seeing these objects’ repairs, and reading about them, impressed on me that we repair things that are important or useful to us. We value their usefulness as daily household or work related items; we value objects which symbolise culture, politics, history or religion; some things we value because we simply find them pleasing or beautiful in some way; and sometimes objects are valuable because our ancestors owned and used them.

Repairing produces scars or visible marks, but that’s a very different expected outcome from the process of restoration, in which repairs are done as skillfully as possible to create the impression the object has been returned to its original appearance and function. It hadn’t occurred to me these are not really interchangeable words!

I don’t recall exactly, but think photography might not have been allowed, which would have been one reason I bought the catalogue; but the other would have been “Why the heck not, anyway?” Having bought two additional large suitcases in Cairo to contain textiles we’d acquired in Egypt, including two large Tentmaker hangings , we already had twice as much luggage as we’d set out with just a few weeks before !!

R

Mike and I visited The Denver Art Museum yesterday specifically to visit an exhibition of fashion “Dior: From Paris to The World”. The house of Dior was founded in Paris by Christian Dior in 1947, and has continued ever since, headed by a line of six designers who succeeded him after his death in 1957. If you are in the Denver area in the next couple of weeks do make an effort to visit. Over 200 garments plus accessories are on show, from the iconic Bar Suit in the first collection to recent pieces from 2017 and 2018. There’s a wonderful overview here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Dior and of course his life and work have been fully documented.

Such a visual feast! But I could not photograph everything, and so the photos that follow are just the most stunning, the ones that most strongly blew me away.

The first Christian Dior collection was presented in 1947, just months after I was born (late 1946) The world was still reeling from the impact of WWII and many countries still had fabric and clothing rationing in addition to food rationing. People gathered the latest news via radio, daily newspapers, weekly magazines and the newsreels that preceded movies at cinemas. European papers and magazines were eagerly awaited by fans of fashion around the world. And though I imagine there were some wealthy Australians who did regularly go to Paris, London and other design centres to buy direct from fashion designers, it has always been usual to copy and incorporate design elements into locally produced garments in time for the southern seasons that are several months behind.

My own mother was considered very elegant, and though I know she didn’t have any Dior numbers (and could never have afforded them) she bought or had her dressmaker sew, clothes that reflected some of the looks from various garments I saw yesterday. Several of the garments reminded me of things I remember Mum wearing.

Dior apparently said “After woman, flowers are the most divine creations.” He loved beautiful dresses and gardening equally. Other designers, too, have been keen gardeners finding much inspiration for detail and embellishment.

The current head of Dior is an Italian, Maria Grazia Chiuri, whose view of the modern woman combines desirability, fragility and confident inner strength. She speaks of the core ingredient of Dior clothes being timelessness, with her role being to create a dream while remaining realistic. I guess this is wearability. The most gorgeous garment in this was this heavily beaded dress, which to wear you’d have to be slim and confident, in equal measures !

The final gallery was large, and this photo was just one corner. Here, as a grand finale perhaps, was a collection of creations from all the Dior designers who at various times have travelled and found inspiration in cultures on continents beyond Europe.