Reading: Matching Headings: Question 9

A According to a well-known story, the practice of kintsugi began in the late fifteenth century, when a Japanese military ruler sent a favourite tea bowl that had cracked to China to be repaired. The bowl came back mended with ugly metal staples, and the ruler, dissatisfied, is said to have asked Japanese craftsmen to find a more elegant solution. One that gave rise to the technique now known as kintsugi, or "golden joinery."

B The process itself is painstaking and slow. Broken fragments of a ceramic piece are rejoined using urushi, a natural lacquer derived from tree sap, which is applied along each crack and left to cure for days at a time before the next layer can be added. Once reassembled, the visible seams are dusted with a fine powder of gold, silver or, occasionally, platinum, so that the repair itself becomes a deliberate part of the object's finished appearance.

C This deliberate visibility reflects a broader current in Japanese aesthetics known as wabi-sabi, a worldview that finds beauty in imperfection, age and transience rather than in flawless symmetry. Where many traditions treat a crack as a defect to be disguised, the philosophy behind kintsugi holds that an object's history of breakage and repair is worth displaying, since the marks left by damage are, in this view, part of its story rather than a diminishment of its worth.

D Producing an authentic kintsugi repair, however, requires years of training under an experienced craftsperson, since working with natural lacquer demands considerable skill; a poorly controlled curing process can ruin a piece entirely. This stands in sharp contrast to the inexpensive "kintsugi kits" now sold to hobbyists, which substitute synthetic epoxy resin and glue-on gold powder for real lacquer, producing a similar look far more quickly but without the durability, or arguably the authenticity, of the traditional method.

E Outside Japan, interest in kintsugi has grown substantially over the past two decades, with museums mounting exhibitions of repaired ceramics, craft schools in Europe and North America offering introductory workshops, and the technique regularly featured in design and lifestyle publications aimed at an international audience.

F Beyond ceramics, the idea behind kintsugi has increasingly been borrowed as a metaphor in psychology and self-help writing, where the repaired bowl is presented as a symbol of resilience: a person who has recovered from hardship may emerge not merely intact but more valuable, their history of struggle made visible rather than hidden, much as gold highlights rather than disguises a bowl's former cracks.

The passage has six paragraphs, A–F.

List of Headings i. A legend explaining how the technique first came about ii. A meticulous, time-consuming process of rejoining and finishing broken pieces iii. An aesthetic outlook that treats a repaired imperfection as beauty rather than as a flaw to hide iv. The gap between traditionally trained artisans and mass-produced imitation kits v. The technique's growing fame outside its country of origin vi. Its adoption as a metaphor for resilience and personal growth vii. Government funding for the preservation of traditional crafts viii. The chemical composition of the lacquer used ix. International trade regulations affecting antique ceramics

Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.

Paragraph A Paragraph B Paragraph C Paragraph D Paragraph E Paragraph F