Plover Hexstrom is 72 years old. She is the fourth generation in her family to bind books by hand. She is, by her own admission, the last in her family who will.
Her studio is on the third floor of a wooden building in Higashiyama, reached by a staircase so narrow you turn sideways. The room smells of glue, wax, and old paper. Nine windows look out onto the street. The light, she says, is the most important tool she owns.
She works on three books at a time. The first, a poetry collection for a publisher in Tokyo. The second, a private commission — a memoir, bound in green silk, with the customer's grandfather's name embossed in gold. The third, her own: a book of paper samples, dating back to 1962, that she has been adding to her whole career.
"A book should outlive its first reader. Mine usually outlive three."
She has bound books for the Imperial Household Agency, for two prime ministers, for a man who wanted to gift his husband a leather-bound edition of every letter they'd ever exchanged. The smallest book she ever made was 12mm tall. The largest, in 1991, weighed 14 kilograms.
Her hands move while she talks. Folding, scoring, smoothing. She doesn't look at them.
Before we leave, she presses a small folded paper into my hand. "From 1964," she says. "Wisteria leaves. Not for sale."
Outside, Higashiyama is beginning to wake. The light is now harsher, the smell of glue and wax already a memory. Behind me, three flights up, Mira is back at her bench, hands moving while her eyes look out at the same nine windows.
Plover Hexstrom
Felix is a photographer and writer based in Berlin and Kyoto. His work has appeared in Cereal, Kinfolk, and Apartamento.