“Broken objects” in modern western culture is a concept based on the Japanese art of Kintsugi, the “golden journey,” or Kintsukuroi, the “golden repair.” 

In practical terms, the artist repairs broken pottery by mending it with a lacquer mixture that includes powdered gold, silver, or in some cases platinum. The artist rises above the nature of a repairman by doing this with a philosophical intent. A repairman hides the repair, attempting to return the object to its original state; the artist highlights the repair, showing the journey each object has taken, exposing the history the pottery carries that is greater than creation and usefulness. 

It provides a connection and identification with things in this world that break, chip, and damage through its existence. In the home, these objects remind us that even the broken still have use and purpose, improving with time and care.

Broken Objects captures the spirit of America in the era between the start of the Civil War and the turn of the new century following the life of Linnea Karlsson, the first naturally-born American in an immigrant family from Sweden, now farming north of Detroit, Michigan.

At the age of ten, Papa sends Linnea to work in the city. Farm life is rough, but Linnea quickly learns she must be tougher growing up in the textile mill making uniforms for the Union Army. Each person she meets introduces her to an America in adolescence, transforming her life. What will she learn that shapes her into becoming a woman? What does it take to persevere through life’s hardships from the Civil War through Reconstruction for the average American to create a new century of greatness?