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Brighter by the Dozen: Lighting Designers

Mark McMenamin -- Interior Design, 8/1/2009 12:00:00 AM

It takes a village at Yamagiwa Corporation. Drawing talent from London, Paris, Buenos Aires, and Japan, the manufacturer offered 12 introductions at Euroluce during this year's Salone Internazionale del Mobile. Members of the group all worked separately before convening in Milan. By coincidence, however, their contributions reflected similar sensibilities.

In Japan, Toyo Ito combined glass fibers with resin to create the ethereal spheres of the Mayuhana table lamps and pendant fixtures. Setsu and Shinobu Ito, no relation, went angular with the chromed aluminum Kigokoro ceiling fixture, its radiating arms housing Swarovski crystal diffusers. Glass appears to encircle the aluminum core of Tokujin Yoshioka's Tear Drop halogen lamp and the smaller Tear Drop Mini LED. With Shirabe, Eriko Horiki turned a side table into a light fixture—with an internally lit pedestal base wrapped in handmade Japanese washi paper and a round tabletop of clear acrylic. Paper covers the acrylic sheets of Kisawings by Kisa Kawakami, while its cedar frame suggests a satellite in orbit. Moonbird, a task lamp by Yukio Hashimoto, abstracts flight into an ultrathin red-lacquered resin curve.

Among those jetting in from London, Peter Emrys-Roberts folded a ribbon of acrylic covered in ribbed fabric into Cumula, a pendant fixture. For the Rorrim pendant, Ross Lovegrove sculpted mirrored glass into a pair of vaguely hooflike forms, powered by a bright red cord. Red liquid fills the glass orb of the Swell pendant by Paul Cocksedge, rising through its stem like mercury in a thermometer as an incandescent bulb heats up. The only task lamp from the British contingent, Stem Ray by Sebastian Conran, features a flexible rubber stem rising from a die-cast zinc tripod base.

Paris and Buenos Aires made one contribution apiece. The handblown white glass diffuser of Christophe Pillet's floor lamp, Yewtree, looks less like a tree and more like Constantin Brancusi's Bird in Space. Architectural models were clearly the inspiration for Pablo Reinoso's Stepysteps, composed of extendable slabs of transparent acrylic.

818-879-8611; yamagiwausa.com. circle 409

Kisa Kawakami Kisawings