STUDIO ALMA

Alma is an Ottawa based family design studio founded in 2022 by Canadian designer and artist Maria Shanina and her husband Nik Shanin. Working together and starting the studio has enabled the couple to embrace and expand their creative practices. Maria is the experimental design force of Alma, responsible for the creation and ideation processes, sketching out concepts, and coming up with new products and objects. Nik's love for wood and his curious engineering mindset drives the studio to constantly improve the technology and perfect the outcome of their work. Alma’s mission is to create objects of aesthetic value and craftsmanship to foster unique, humanely and ecologically healthy modern environments. It’s about demonstrating care and soul that the couple put in them through art, design and craft. Attentive to details and quality of materials, the studio focuses on creating timeless pieces that stick with their owners throughout life. That’s why the primary material of Alma’s products is wood - familiar, versatile, sustainable material of the future, carefully chosen to sustain function and extend the life of Alma’s creations. By highlighting the patterns of knots, the annual rings, the holes left from the bugs and worms, the studio embraces the nature of wood highlighting - what otherwise would be considered as imperfections - for Alma it is here to exist and be presented as a natural beauty.

View our collection of Studio Alma's tray and sculpture here.