The range of Akari Light Sculptures from Vitra is the height of lighting sophistication, with the craft of the handmade rightly celebrated the world over.
Isamu Noguchi’s iconic lamps have been produced for nearly 70 years, and continue to be made by hand, by master crafts-people, in Gifu, Japan, where this particular type of paper lantern has been produced for generations. Noguchi has designed over 100 different models of the Akari since 1951, ranging in size from 24cm to 290cm, and the Vitra Akari 25N Floor Lamp sits somewhere in the middle of this range at 117cm tall. The height of the 25N impresses but never imposes, with the elegant shape carried on graceful, spindly legs.
Isamu Noguchi was an American-Japanese designer who originally trained as a sculptor and brought a sculptural sensibility to everything he created: lighting, furniture, gardens and stage sets. He studied sculpture, after dropping out of medical school, in late 1920s New York and then in Paris as an assistant to Constantin Brancusi.
Noguchi designed a range of paper Akari lights throughout the 1950s and 1960s, alongside the popular organic furniture he made in curvy sculpted wood now part of the Vitra Collection, such as the Freeform Sofa and Coffee Table. He was equally prolific as a landscape architect; he recreated the ancient Buddhist stone gardens he had loved in Kyoto at Lever House in New York (1951), UNESCO in Paris (1951), the Yale campus (1960) and Jerusalem’s Israel Museum (1960).
