About JAPONICA

Meet the maker


I'm Miki, born and raised in Japan. For a decade before starting JAPONICA Kintsugi Jewelry in 2023, I worked as a humanitarian worker abroad, living across a number of different cultures.

That distance is what made me look back at Japan and really see kintsugi for the first time — an idea I'd never come across anywhere else. I wanted to share it with people outside Japan, so I started making kintsugi jewelry.

What kintsugi is

Kintsugi is the traditional Japanese art of repairing broken pottery. Instead of hiding the damage, the technique draws attention to it.

In the Japanese tea ceremony, kintsugi pottery is often considered more valuable than an unbroken piece, not despite the repair but because of it.

The cracks carry the memory of the piece, and that history is exactly what makes it one of a kind.

How each piece is made

Every JAPONICA piece is handmade by me, using a modern take on the kintsugi technique. I source the pottery from local secondhand shops, giving old, once-loved pieces a second life.

Because of how kintsugi works, no two pieces are ever the same: each one broke differently, and each one was mended differently.

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