The Kurage light was created in a process akin to the Japanese poetry genre known as tanka, or ‘short poem’, in which the three lines generate a two-line response. Nendo and Luca took turns coming up with concepts, before passing over to the other party to use as inspiration, and to further expand and develop the ideas.
An experiment in dynamic design, the project was free flowing, where nothing was planned in advance. “The design process felt like a jam session,” Nendo reports, “with each participant taking turns improvising new melodies on top of a shared rhythm until a new song emerged.”
Taking the image of ‘paper ice cream’, the Kurage collection was designed by carving ends of Japanese cypress posts flat, with the actual material for lampshades make through dyeing traditional Japanese paper.
The lamp’s soft light and the paper fibres that it accentuates when lit are reminiscent of floating jellyfish, which bring out an expressive quality to the piece.