Two stones positioned to look like a broken heart mended with gold. Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold. Kintsugi (金継ぎ, "golden joinery"), also known as Kintsukuroi (金繕い, "golden repair")

Kintsugi can be seen to have similarities to the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi, an embracing of the flawed or imperfect.Japanese aesthetics values marks of wear by the use of an object. This can be seen as a rationale for keeping an object around even after it has broken and as a justification of kintsugi itself, highlighting the cracks and repairs as simply an event in the life of an object rather than allowing its service to end at the time of its damage or breakage. The repaired piece becomes far more valuable having been broken and carefully repaired.

“Not only is there no attempt to hide the damage, but the repair is literally illuminated... a kind of physical expression of the spirit of mushin....Mushin is often literally translated as "no mind," but carries connotations of fully existing within the moment, of non-attachment, of equanimity amid changing conditions. ...The vicissitudes of existence over time, to which all humans are susceptible, could not be clearer than in the breaks, the knocks, and the shattering to which ceramic ware too is subject. This poignancy or aesthetic of existence has been known in Japan as mono no aware, a compassionate sensitivity, or perhaps identification with, [things] outside oneself.”— Christy Bartlett, Flickwerk: The Aesthetics of Mended Japanese Ceramics

Hannah believes that this concept can be applied to the human heart and The Fragile Heart Series is based around this concept.