Almana is a mountain in the Prealps of Lombardy in Northern Italy, once a place surrounded by lush pastures. With these handmade toys and objects, we hope to bring the intensity and freedom of mountain life into your home, wherever you may be: the warmth of the wooden figures in your child’s palm, the fragrant scent of the cirmolo pine. The immediacy of stories from other places and other times, the flow of the seasons across the ages. Every element of this set has been shaped and crafted by the hands of local artisans. Each piece is unique, and bears the mark of its origin and artisan creator. The grain of the wood, the placement of knots. The hand-stitched textiles and traditional embroidery, bumpy to the touch.

Elena Stevenato is a mother, an architect, and a traveler. Once a city person, now a country person. For years, she zoomed around the world very fast as a landscape architect, designing whole cities from the ground up, catching ideas on one continent and releasing them onto another. She sped through the land and zoomed over oceans. Now, she stays in the mountains with her young family. At home during the pandemic, her children shared her design studio. As the months passed, time and space blurred. They, like many families, made more room for imagination, for endless hours of unscripted play in the gaps and blank spaces of the their schedule. Invention, concentration, struggle and joy rule the day.