Noguchi lamp designs light up modern decor
NEW YORK — The round, white, paper light shades sold at Ikea for $5 are a familiar item in contemporary interior design. But these inexpensive lanterns are knock-offs of light sculptures created by the renowned artist Isamu Noguchi in the early 1950s.
The Noguchi lamps — called akari, the Japanese word for light — were inspired by traditional Japanese lanterns used in ancestor worship. Over the decades, the akari became classics of mid-20thcentury modern home decor.
Noguchi’s original designs are still handmade in Japan; they come in a variety of colours and dozens of geometric designs — including the widely imitated white sphere — and range in price from $100 to $1,000. And they pop up in some pretty cool places, from painter Georgia O’Keeffe’s home in New Mexico to Tony Stark’s bedroom in Iron Man 3.
The story of how the late Noguchi came to create akari is rooted in the recovery of Japan’s postSecond World War economy and the cross-cultural currents that influenced his spare, bold, modernist esthetics.
Noguchi’s mother was American; his father Japanese. They never married. Born in 1904, Noguchi spent years in both countries during his youth. After the Second World War, he was greatly admired by the art and design community in Japan, and at some point met the mayor of the town of Gifu, where local industry centred around making lanterns for ancestry worship, using paper from mulberry trees.
“The mayor asked Noguchi, ‘Can you help us resurrect our lantern business?”’ said Jenny Dixon, director of the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, N.Y. “That’s how the akari were first produced. They were exported as an economic product and were well-received by the design community.”
Each lamp has bamboo ribbing and standard wiring, and can accommodate incandescent or compact fluorescent bulbs (45 watts for small lamps, 75 watts for large). Designs range from spheres, discs and cylinders to triangles, boxes, trapezoids and other geometric shapes and combinations. Most shades are white, but some are decorated in orange, green or black; a few bear abstract designs.
There are hanging lamps, as well as table lamps and floor lamps with metal legs or small black circular bases.
Many appear breathtakingly elegant; others have a whimsical, futuristic look.
Akari can be ordered from Shop.noguchi.org/akari.html