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Ever dropped your favourite wineglass on the floor? Knocked a cherished vase of a table? Watched a priceless glass memory shatter into sharp, glorified sand? Unrecoverable, you mournfully sweep it into a box, tape it out, and put it out to the curb... unless you send it us. We'll reshape the razor sharp
shards into something stunning and full of character. A paperweight or plate, perhaps a vase. You can choose how the memory lives in your life. And we'll make sure they're extra thick this time so you don't break them again.
For a significant premium we could create an imitation of the original, a complete self-grafted Frankenstein repair like Modern Prometheus and the Ship of Theseus. No guarantees on identical, though; you cannot step in the same river twice.
Kintsugi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintsugi
Japanese art of repairing broken pottery, highlighting the cracks with gold lacquer [Loris, Jun 15 2025]
[link]
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That may just be possible with glass - gold's melting temperature is 1,064 °C, while glass melts somewhere between 1,400°C to 1,600°C, although it softens below that. |
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Perhaps a lower melting temperature alloy of mostly gold would be better for this purpose?
Apparently 80% gold, 20% tin melts at 280 degrees C - that's probably lower than we strictly need, so it seems pretty feasible. |
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Seems impractical, very hard to monetarise and actually barely possible - therefore fully approved! [+] |
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I've always thought that if you're repairing ceramics with solid gold, then your economy is wildly out of balance. For 1g of gold I'm happy to pop down to Ikea and get you a full dinner set. I mean, ceramics are essentially carefully shaped baked dirt. Glass: carefully shaped molten sand. |
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I've never had a glass item with significant sentimental value... my boyhood bedroom window? |
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To be fair the Japanese used lacquer and gold dust, not straight gold. So it maybe didn't use all that much gold. |
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I just thought melting them together might give a nice effect, given the transparency of glass. Maybe with gold leaf? |
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