u/benjamin-crowell

I had two pieces of broken pottery around the house, and when I read an article about kintsugi in the newspaper, I decided to try it. Here is one of the pieces, which is a work in progress but nearly complete. At this point I have the tools and materials to do traditional kintsugi using urushi, but actually I kind of feel like I'm at a dead end because of the lack of any other broken pottery to work with. I've asked friends, a couple of neighbors, and someone I knew at the gym if they had any broken pottery that they might want repaired, but no luck.

Brainstorming about what to try that might be fun and within my ability as a beginner, I thought it might be amusing to try to do a very simple maki-e design on top of a Casio F-91W digital watch. This is a classic, cheap digital watch, which even has its own wikipedia page. I've been using them for years, and I don't pay any attention to the printed material on the face of the watch surrounding the LCD display. So I was thinking of doing something like a flower or a cricket or a cloud or something, maybe a black urushi background with the design in red. The maki-e would surround the LCD part of the display.

Is this a reasonable starter project if I want to learn this craft? Is there a good book I can buy?

The case of the watch is some kind of synthetic resin. I assume the transparent front is something like lucite, and I don't know how well urushi would adhere to it. I suppose I could test it by putting a dab of urushi on.