The place that inspired Noguchi to create his “Akari” series was Gifu: the Japanese city where traditionally were manufactured all the paper products such as lanterns or umbrellas.
At that time Noguchi was already internationally known and appreciated for his works, and the city’s major asked him to design an affordable and mass producible lamp to help to revive the local paper-craft industry. The artist started to work at the project the same day sketching out a lamp that perfectly mixed sculptural and design qualities from one side with traditional and advanced manufacturing techniques from the other: the Isamu Noguchi Akari lamp was born.
Since the 50s the Noguchi lamp has been produced by the Gifu paper-lantern manufacturer Ozeki & Co and by Vitra Design Museum from 2001
The lamps were an incredibly commercially successful
