In the Bay Area, you don’t need her last name. You just say “Hideko,” and everyone in the bonsai and suiseki world knows exactly who you mean.
For over four decades, Hideko Metaxas has been the quiet heartbeat of Japanese traditional arts in North America. A charter member of the San Francisco Suiseki Kai since its founding in 1981, she went on to become one of the most beloved teachers of bonsai, suiseki, ikebana, and tokonoma display in the country.
She has:
- Served as President of the Golden State Bonsai Federation (1990–91), where she helped establish two of California’s landmark bonsai collections — at the Huntington and at Lake Merritt — and launched an apprenticeship program sending American artists to train in Japan
- Earned the highest diploma (Saikoshoku) in Ikenobo Ikebana, leading the Northern California chapter across four separate terms
- Co-written one of the earliest and most influential English-language texts on suiseki, “Introducing Suiseki” (1983)
- Received Japan’s Green and White Award in 2005 for a lifetime spent building understanding between Japan and California
But ask anyone who has actually sat with her — beside a stone held gently in her hands, in front of a tokonoma she’s just arranged — and the awards fade next to her real gift: her ability to turn a display into a story, a stone into a season, a stranger into someone who believes, for the first time, that this art is for them, too.
Now in her mid-90s, her wonder hasn’t dimmed. This book is a tribute to the woman who taught us how to look more closely at the world — told through her own history, her art, and the memories of the many lives she’s touched.
If you know Hideko, these pages will make you smile. If you don’t yet know her, we hope they make you wish you did.
Available now – click here for her book!
Posted by Janet Roth 
Suiseki Art 