The Cultural History of Staple Repair

Historically, the method of using metal staples to repair or strengthen ceramics has been adopted in many countries worldwide. In general, the method involves drilling holes along either side of a crack on a ceramic ware, and then inserting u-shaped metal staples to repair the ware. This study examines the examples of ceramics with staple repairs in East Asian, South Asian, Middle East, and European histories. According to the findings, this study argues that the craft of staple repair for high-temperature glazed porcelain in 18th-century Europe could have been influenced by China, and staple repair craftsman could be regarded as a new profession emerging along with European hard porcelain. In the region of China, staple repair was mainly applied to broken ceramics. However, the images of stapled ceramics were already used as an artistic strategy to create an atmosphere of high antiquity in literati paintings as early as the mid- and late Ming dynasty. The appreciation of metal staples on ceramics that rose in the circle of tea ceremony in 16th-century Japan could have also been inspired by the unique interpretation of stapled ceramics among Ming literati. The cultural connotations of staple repair differ between China and Japan. In China, metal staples on ceramics were only used as an image or symbol of antiquity among literati of a specific period. By contrast, such staples developed into a quaint object for appreciation in the history of the Japanese tea ceremony. In addition, this cultural practice has been enthusiastically discussed by contemporary studies of Japanese cultural history as an indicator and example of the Japanese aesthetics of appreciation since the Momoyama period. Particularly, the practice of endowing stapled ceramics with symbolic meanings and appreciating them is only found in China and Japan, which is a special cultural phenomenon in the world history of stapled ceramics.