Grapat is a small, family-run project from Barcelona that came to be after we left the city to live in a natural environment. However, the idea started brewing within us many years ago, during the first 3 years of our eldest daughter's life. She had practically no toys, and that led us to reflect on the need children have for them. We did internal work to allow her to use everyday objects, we opened kitchen cupboards, we allowed books to become roads, scarves to become cabins and paths...

We are inspired by watching our children and other children play; play has something sacred about it, like a meditation, like a parallel world governed by its own norms, times, and rules. Play is the moment of YES, where EVERYTHING IS OK, except for the rules established, which usually have to do with not harming oneself, others, the environment, the materials, and the creations of others... And when these moments of true play occur, we cherish them, we protect them as if they were sacred moments. We do not interrupt, we care for the space, we remain silent...

We are inspired daily to see how the need to play, almost more than to eat (in our case), leads them to play with a stone in a horrible vacant lot under the midday summer sun. Play in children is like an earthquake that cannot be stopped, no matter how hard adults try. Free play, loose parts, unstructured and open-ended materials amaze us daily because they transform into whatever the children decide and what is the fruit of their internal need. We propose a material without instructions; the only premise is to let them be, without time limits, slowly. A material that incites, invites, provokes the creation of small, diverse, fantastic, realistic, invented worlds...

We work at home, with earth, fire, and a river nearby, and many children always close by inspiring us daily as they flutter around the garden, jumping contentedly...