Paris, 1954. Véronique Michel-Dalès creates a small collection of colourful dominoes for learning letters and numbers, and calls her company Djeco — named after the gecko, a lizard believed to bring good luck. She was a true pioneer, her son Frédéric would say, decades later, when he revived the brand and carried it forward. Seventy years on, the family business still runs from a workshop by the Seine, still led by the same belief: that the things children play with should be as beautiful as anything else in the home. Made to be played with endlessly, and kept long after childhood has moved on.