The Adjacent Guide
LightA paper lamp that has outlasted most of the furniture around it.
Akari 10A · Isamu Noguchi
One of the first Akari light sculptures Isamu Noguchi designed, still made in Gifu, Japan. Proof that the most lasting object in a room can be made of paper.
In 1951, on his way to Hiroshima, Isamu Noguchi stopped in Gifu, a town known for paper lanterns called chochin. The local industry had been reduced largely to decorations and advertising. Asked to help revive it, Noguchi replaced the candle with a light bulb and named the result Akari, a Japanese word meaning light.
The 10A is among the first Akari he designed: a mulberry-bark washi shade on evenly spaced bamboo ribbing, held on a three-legged metal frame. Like the rest of the family, it is made by Ozeki & Co., a Gifu lantern maker founded in 1891 that has produced Akari since 1951.
The paper does not hide the light. It becomes the light.
Noguchi thought of Akari as sculpture from the start. Seventy-five years on, the 10A still asks very little of a room and gives it a great deal.
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