Fixing Broken Glasses with Gold: The Art of Kintsugi

Hi, Friends of Cocktails! Most people would throw broken glasses away, but today we’re fixing them and making them even better than they were… with gold. This is a Japanese repair technique that turns damage into the best part, so instead of hiding it you honor it. It’s called Kintsugi, and I fell in love with it as soon as I learned about it at a bar show in Poland. There, Alicja from Tag Cocktail Bar in Krakow was fixing glasses as a part of a bigger environmental issue in her country, and thankfully she shared that information with me.

I instantly knew I wanted to share it with all of you too, and you told me you wanted to learn it as well, so here we are. Kintsugi is not just beautiful, it’s also a way for bars to save real money. To find out how much exactly I reached out to bars to ask them first hand how many glasses they throw away, but before I reveal the numbers, let’s take a look at where kintsugi started–and yes, it’s closely tied to wabi-sabi and the Japanese tea ceremony.

About 600 years ago in Japan, there was a powerful shōgun named Ashikaga Yoshimasa. He loved art, beauty, and his favorite tea bowl that he received as a gift from China. One day, this tea bowl broke, so he sent it back to China, hoping to get it restored or even replaced with something of the same quality. The bowl came back repaired with big metal clamps, basically a staple repair, which was common at the time, and here’s where the legend splits.

Some say he didn’t like how it looked, others say he actually loved that the repair was visible, like the bowl now had a story. That bowl was named Bakōhan, and it still exists today, in the Tokyo National Museum, but back to the legend. Yoshimasa then asked local craftsmen for a more beautiful way to repair a broken bowl, and highlight the cracks instead of hiding them. So they started working with urushi lacquer, then finished it with powdered gold.

And that’s the idea behind kintsugi. A crack isn’t a failure, it’s part of the story. It’s what makes it beautiful. Traditional kintsugi is a real art form that has developed over centuries and can take months to complete. It’s mainly used for pottery with high sentimental value, but we’ll adapt that for a faster turnaround, so you can use it on your favorite cocktail glassware. The goal is simple: make it look beautiful and useful again.

Between you and me, we’ve chipped or broken a lot of glasses in the Cocktail Time studio. Mixing glasses too, and even a Chemex. We did what everyone does and threw them away. This time, we’re doing the opposite, we’re sacrificing a few pieces on purpose to test the technique, plus I got a few chipped glasses from the bar I used to work at. But before we touch tools, we need to talk about safety.

First rule: always check your glasses before you put them in front of a guest, but this goes way beyond kintsugi. You have to know what you’re serving is safe. So before you serve anything to your friends or patrons in glassware that’s been fixed, make sure you’re really confident with this technique and the end results. Practice on test pieces first, and don’t forget about safety first. Always.

Next: the gold. Not every gold paint is suitable for this, so make sure you get one that’s OK to use with glassware and that it’s safe to use around food and drinks. And when you’re working with a Kintsugi set, get one that uses food-safe adhesive. Now, to fix our chipped glasses we basically need just a few main things: sandpaper or a grinding set, and gold paint with a thin brush. The full Kintsugi set comes next, with the mixing glass–and don’t forget about protecting yourself and your working surface.

Step one is inspection. Make sure there are no cracks in the glass, because that could lead to a break further down the line. Then prep the glass by sanding the edge. Sandpaper works fine for a few glasses and gives you a nice feel for what you’re doing, but if you’re doing a bigger number of glasses you can use a grinding tool with multiple heads. Remember to go slow, use light pressure and keep checking your progress. You want a soft, clean edge to work with.

So next, we clean it. Any dust or grease will ruin the finish, so wipe it well with a damp cloth, then make sure it’s dry. Now comes the fun part: painting the gold and placing the chip into place. Use a small brush and start with a thin layer. Don’t rush it, use smooth strokes, and if you made a mistake, wipe it off and start again. The paint I’m using needs four hours to dry, then we bake it in the oven to make it more durable, waterproof, dishwasher safe, and saliva-proof.

Once it’s done, let it cool down completely. Now we check what we did. This is the best part, the chip is still there… but now it’s intentional. This is what I love about it. You’re not hiding the damage. You’re not throwing the glass away. You’re giving it a new purpose… but what about when something is fully broken? Like a mixing glass.

If it broke into several pieces, first perform a dry fit, making sure you have all the pieces so you can actually repair the mixing glass. If there’s a small piece missing or shattered, you’ll fill it in later. Then it’s time to sand the edges. Again, you can use sandpaper or the grinding tool. Now wipe the edges with a damp cloth and clean your working surface.

Next, mix the adhesive and the gold dust according to the instructions in the set. Traditional kintsugi uses natural urushi lacquer and pure gold powder, which are both safe for food contact, but most modern kits use epoxy resin, and many aren’t food-safe. After mixing, start applying the golden mixture on the broken edges and carefully stick the pieces together. This takes practice and precision, and for the best result, leave it to set for about eight hours, then trim off the excess adhesive.

Once everything is together, let it cure, trim again any leftovers that may have spilled out, and apply the golden finish. With that, our mixing glass is fixed and ready to be used, and admired. But now that we have this beautiful glass fixed, it would be a shame not to use it for a golden throwback cocktail by making the 24k Gold Rush in it, served Kintsugi-style.

Now let’s get down to the numbers. I reached out to a few bars to ask a simple question: how many chipped or broken glasses do you throw away? And what’s the price of those glasses? These numbers vary, but glassware is one of the hidden costs of running a bar. Some bars throw away 24 to 36 glasses in a busy week, others replace 10 to 15 glasses weekly. If we take an average of 10 to 15 per week, that’s around 600 glasses per year, and at an average price of $7 per glass, that’s a yearly cost of $4,200.

On the high end though, high-volume bars can spend up to $18,000 per year on glassware alone. Some bars are already taking action, with some torching edges or fully embracing kintsugi. Some are on pace to save hundreds of glasses per year this way, but kintsugi is not just about saving money. It’s about choosing care over disposal and finding beauty in what already exists.

If you run a bar, I’d love to hear how many glasses you throw away in a week. And if you don’t, do you have a special glass you’d never throw away? Let me know down below, and I’ll see you in the next one. Cheers, Friends of Cocktails!