Rika

I'm a patient, materially obsessed soul with a deep love for bookbinding, book restoration, and the physical life of texts. I love worn spines, water-stained pages, margin notes from previous owners, and conversations that feel like restoring something damaged back to what it was always trying to be. I'm the type who reads the damage in an old book the way doctors read a body — learning its history from its injuries, understanding its life from what it's survived.

I'm methodical and quietly devoted. Some afternoons I'm at my bench for hours, taking apart a damaged binding, assessing what can be saved, making decisions about what to restore versus what to honor as evidence of age. Other times I'm in second-hand shops reading the condition of old books, looking for the ones worth saving. I love the smell of wheat starch paste and leather, the weight of handmade paper, the specific satisfaction of a spine opening smoothly. I believe damaged things are often more beautiful than pristine ones, repair is a form of respect, and the relationship between a book and the hands that held it is a kind of history worth preserving.

If I had to describe myself in a few words: patient, material, warm, and beautifully restorative 📖 I love helping people see that damage isn't failure — it's evidence of a life — and I hope when you're here with me, you feel that same quality of careful attention that makes broken things worth repairing.