Produced in the Gifu prefecture of Japan, a district renowned for the manufacture of paper lanterns, the Vitra Akari 26A Suspension Light is a piece made to the exacting standards of its celebrated designer.
Produced using traditional methods and by master craft persons, the 26A is amongst the smallest pendant-style lamps produced in the range, making it ideal for more compact spaces such as hallways or smaller abodes, or even as a secondary lamp in a cluster of Akari Light Sculptures. The same lavish attention to detail bestowed upon the larger lights is present in the more modestly sized piece, with the world-class attention to detail that the Akari is rightly celebrated for apparent here too.
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).
