Crafts
The Tapestry Weaver of Aubusson
On looms older than the French Revolution, Margaux Vincendeau weaves wool and silk into tapestries that will hang, she says, longer than any of the families that commission them.
Section
Crafts
Bookbinders, bellfounders, weavers, glove-makers, boatwrights — the trades where the tool is older than the tradesman.
Crafts
The Typewriter Restorer of Vila Madalena
In a São Paulo storefront the size of a small kitchen, Mauricio Pessoa rebuilds Olivettis and Olympias with replacement parts he machines on a lathe behind a hanging curtain.
Crafts
The Bowyer of the Irati Forest
In a stone shed at the edge of a Navarrese beech forest, Iker Etxeberria splits yew staves with wedges and tillers hunting bows the way his grandfather did, by eye.
Crafts
The Papermaker of Ogawamachi
In a snow-fed village in Saitama, Akiko Tateishi grows her own kozo, beats the pulp with river stones, and sheets washi paper that will outlast the houses it is glued into.
Crafts
The Boatwright of Muscongus Bay
On a cove in midcoast Maine, Caleb Drisko builds one wooden lobster boat a year, planking white cedar onto oak frames in a shed his grandfather raised in 1947.
Crafts
The Glove-Maker of Via Chiaia
In a Naples atelier above a pasticceria, Carmela Russo cuts and hand-stitches kidskin gloves for opera singers, surgeons, and the occasional cardinal.
Crafts
The Bellfounder of San Piero
At a foundry near Pisa that has cast church bells since 1432, Lorenzo Capecchi still tunes bronze on a lathe his great-grandfather built, by ear and by harmonic.
Crafts
The Bookbinder of Candlemaker Row
In a stone-floored shop below Edinburgh's Greyfriars Kirkyard, Isla MacReady rebuilds Victorian municipal ledgers with goat parchment, wheat paste, and a press older than the city's tramlines.