Lydia Silvestri said that her mountain upbringing in Chiuro, close to Italy’s border with Switzerland, taught her to take pleasure in “weaving baskets, whittling bowls and clogs out of wood, kitchen utensils, seeing a wall grow stone by stone chosen out of a heap of stones with a careful eye, and silkworms constructing perfect cocoons of gold, making vats for wine, repairing a doll’s arm or the hoof of a calf.” Her words gleam with a sensual enjoyment for all kinds of creaturely manufacture and ancient practices, and suggest a curious equity among these processes. Though she often worked in