What Holds Us Together

On a recent trip to the UK, I once again found myself wandering into an antique ceramics shop in Norfolk. It wasn’t the first time I’d been mesmerised by the pieces on display: gems from across periods of history and regions spanning English, Chinese, Dutch, Japanese, and surely many more besides.

Richard, the owner, opened the shop fifty-eight years ago; before that, he was a restorer at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. He knows his pieces, and he speaks about them with such passion.

The Japanese art of repair with gold, also known as Kintsugi, is beautiful and prized, yet the metal staples you find holding English pottery together are far less revered. The museum, Richard told me, preferred an invisible glue. He favours the staples. There is something quietly radical that runs against the grain of how we usually think of ‘repair’, that a piece of metal can hold something together rather than break it.

A fellow visitor in the shop showed me a small plate held together with these staples, and I instantly fell in love with its colours and patterns. Often these small things inspire me, with each piece holding its own story and its own reason for falling into my hands. Richard said he likes the staples to shine, so we scraped the metal with what I think was a razor, and afterwards they gleamed. On another shelf, I found a sweet little monkey’s head with a moving tongue, it reminded me of a cartoon character called Zephir from Barbar, though it dates back to the Meiji period (1868-1912). I also came away with a little piece of treasure pulled from the Thames, through a process known as mudlarking. The yellow marbling on this precious piece of pottery is said to be from between 1660 and 1750.

Small things that bring me joy, little heirlooms to draw inspiration from. Richard is in his nineties, still running the shop and brimming with knowledge. I could spend hours talking with him, and I hope I do on my next visit to Norfolk.

03 July 2026