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Café Nosjean
Kintsugi Materials /
Epoxy adhesive, filler and reconstruction material
Black urushi
Red urushi
Commission Price /
£402
Testimonial /
"I don’t know how to thank you for the great joy you’ve given my mother and me, thanks to your beautiful restoration of my grandmother’s coffee cups. When we sent them to you one was in so many pieces that we never imagined it could be put together again, never mind used and drunk from! The other was completely missing its handle, which you’ve somehow managed to recreate out of thin air, and stronger than the original. We’ve put them where we can admire them on a shelf in the kitchen, and we use them every lunchtime. It’s like being back in my childhood, and I love the graceful lines of the red kintsugi joins. But of course it’s more than that - I know my mother thinks about her own mother every time she holds them..."
These two small, delicate café cups are Martine's only remaining mementos of the café run by two generations of her family. They come from Café Nosjean - a modest village square café in Torpes, in the region of Bresse. Martine's great grandmother & great grandfather, Marie & Jean-Claude Nosjean started the café in around 1915. In 1938 Martine's Grandmother (Mémée), Céline Nosjean, closed her grocery shop in a nearby village to take on running the café when Marie & Jean-Claude were no longer able to work. She ran it through the second world war & into the 1950s.
The damage to these cups was extensive. The repair has involved creating a replacement handle for one cup & reassembling & filling missing pieces of the second cup.
Martine wanted the repair to be safe for occasional use. She decided to opt for a glossy lacquered finish with red-brown urushi. This finish works sympathetically with the colours and textures of the cups as well as being durable and completely food-safe for hot or cold liquids.































