Hello! I’m Diletta, a picturebook maker – passionate about supporting children’s book writers and illustrators. Our studio is a space for creative cooperation, inspiration and learning.
Here’s how it all started:
I longed to dip into a picturebook and fly to imaginary lands… so I packed a suitcase, strapped baby Wolf to my chest, and moved to London!
It was bliss: I studied Children’s Literature at Roehampton University and learned how to make picturebooks at The Cambridge School of Art. I made incredibly talented friends there, and even signed up with a fabulous literary agent!
And then…
… Covid forced us to move back to Rome, and then my MA finished. So suddenly I was alone in my studio, struggling to start a new book, and I felt so lonely. Months passed. With no courses, no deadlines and no fellow creatives to compare notes with, it was tough.
I dreamed of being surrounded by writers and illustrators again – sharing our stories, sipping coffee, discussing the power of a page turn, the rhythm of a figure of speech… There’d be laughter, excitement and piles of picturebooks everywhere!
Where it all started: London in the 1940s
Combining creativity and friendship is our most cherished family tradition. It dates back to the 1940s when my grandfather shared an art studio by the King’s Rd with legendary children’s book writer and illustrator, Mervyn Peake.
When Mervyn and his wife, the painter Meave Gilmore, learned that my grandparents were expecting their first child and had very little money, they invited them to stay at their home in Kent. What followed was an “eruption of creativity”, an extraordinary year in which the four friends wrote, painted and parented together. (click here to read the letter that my grandfather wrote to Maeve Gilmore remembering those happy times https://www.jstor.org/stable/24776503)
Italian 
English