Wabi-sabi

"Wabi-sabi is the quintessential Japanese aesthetic. It is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete," wrote Leonard Koren in his book Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers. It is a beauty of things modest and humble, and of "things unconventional." Peripherally associated with Zen Buddhism, wabi-sabi values characteristics that are rustic, earthy, and unpretentious, involving natural materials which are used neither representationally nor symbolically.(pr. WAH-bee-SAH-bee)