I recently received a Japanese fountain pen that came with a note about its hand-applied laquer finish, namely, that since it was done by hand it would naturally have imperfections.
The note explained that “wabi-sabi in traditional Japanese aesthetic philosophy refers to the beauty of imperfection or ‘flawed beauty.’ Things are beautiful when they naturally come, develop and go. Things are beautiful as they are imperfect.”
Imperfection as beauty. A Western cynic might argue the concept is really just a rationalization for sub-standard work.
But wabi-sabi is not just a Japanese aesthetic. A variant of it was also espoused by John Ruskin, the English art critic and essayist of Victorian times. He wrote “no good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art.”
Ruskin went on to explain that “no great man ever stops working till he has reached his point of failure; this is to say, his mind is always far in advance of his powers of execution, and the latter will now and then give way in trying to follow it.” Secondly, imperfection “is the sign of life in a mortal body, that is to say, of a state of progress and change. Nothing that lives is, or can be, rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent. … And in all things that live there are certain irregularities and deficiencies which are not only signs of life, but sources of beauty.” (from The Stones of Venice, Volume 2, 1853)
In our mechanical age, when products are largely made by computers and robots, it’s refreshing to think that some things are still made by human hand; and in celebrating the human, to embrace the concept of variety, individuality, and yes, even imperfection. The more I think on it, the more I like it.
By the way, the pen is indeed beautiful, even if, so far, I’ve failed to find any flaws or imperfections. Perhaps that means I’m the imperfect one. If so, that’s okay: wabi-sabi.