"Akari: Sculpture By Other Means"--The Lighting of Isamu Noguchi

Isamu Nogchi was a multi-disciplinary Modernist master. Born in Los Angeles in 1904 to a Japanese father and white mother, Noguchi grew up in Japan until he was 13. During these formative years, he clearly absorbed the respect and love of craft and form. He studied art and sculpture (with Constantin Brâncuși among others!) and created a vast body of work ranging from environmental design and sculptural gardens to product design to children's playgrounds to furniture design to sets for choreographers Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, and George Balanchine, and composer John Cage. “Everything is sculpture,” Noguchi said. “Any material, any idea without hindrance born into space, I consider sculpture."

I previously created a post here about Noguchi's iconic cocktail table consisting of two boomerang-shaped pieces of wood delicately supporting a glass top. And I have been meaning to follow up that post with one about his equally iconic paper lanterns which became part of Mid-Century design as well. Since the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, New York is currently presenting "Akari: Scuplture By Other Means" featuring an unprecedented collection of his paper lanterns, now seems the perfect time.

The museum exhibition information says:
"Akari: Sculpture by Other Means occupies the Museum’s second-floor galleries. It includes several installations that allow visitors to experience ways that Isamu Noguchi’s Akari—a modular ecosystem of lightweight, collapsible paper lanterns—can create and transform space.

Noguchi’s electrified paper, bamboo, and metal Akari light sculptures have quietly become among the most ubiquitous sculptures on Earth. Their origins lie in 1951 when, on a trip to a still devastated post-war Japan, Noguchi was asked by the mayor of the small town of Gifu City to help revitalize the local lantern industry by creating a modern lamp for export using the traditional washi paper (made by hand from the inner bark of the mulberry tree) and bamboo.

Inspired by the lanterns that illuminated night fishing on the Nagara River, Noguchi worked with local firm Ozeki & Co. to combine the elements of the traditional paper lantern with electricity. He designed a dizzying array of new forms—creating contemporary art by marrying ancient craft with the defining technology of the twentieth-century. He would go on to create more than 200 models of Akari, including an entire line for his exhibition for the American Pavilion at the 1986 Venice Biennale, in the process receiving five American and thirty-one Japanese patents.

The installations in Sculpture by Other Means create a series of environments that convey the essential values of Akari, drawing on the organizational, structural and ephemeral qualities of nature, and exemplifying Noguchi’s concept of light as both place and object. These include the chamber-like Akari PL1 and an eight-foot cube made of illuminated PL2 panels.

Also featured is the Akari 200D, a two-meter wide globe Noguchi made for his 1986 Venice Biennale presentation (titled, tellingly, Isamu Noguchi: What is Sculpture?). Designed in 1985, the 200D is the largest Akari that Noguchi ever created. It is displayed here as it was at the Biennale, in a large wood-frame box, based on a Japanese display niche, that Noguchi made for that exhibition."

All exhibition photos above by Nicholas Knight via Design Boom

"Akari: Sculpture By Other Means" shows through Sunday, January 27, 2019. If you are in, near, or will be near Long Island City, this is a great opportunity. Contact the museum for more information.

Happy designing!

History of Furniture: Japan

At first glance, this installation of History of Furniture might seem to be not much about furniture at all, but stay with me. Like everything else that exists on this planet, furniture has evolved and grown over time. We did not always have a "sofa" or a "chair" to sit on. At various times throughout history and in different cultures, homes may have contained an array of objects which might not seem familiar or comfortable to our 21st century sensibilities.

This might be the case with the interiors of ancient Japan. Interestingly, in both ancient and contemporary traditional Japanese culture, the floor is really the place to sit or sleep. Notice that furniture seating is conspicuously absent in the beautiful room above (the only furniture pieces are low tables for eating, writing, or display). Japanese interiors were furnished with a type of woven straw floor mat called tatami. These mats were finished on the edges and could be laid in different configurations to adapt to the shifting dimensions of the rooms which could be adjusted using sliding shoji screens. Then, as now, shoes were left outside before entering a home. In this way, the tatami mats remained clean for sitting and sleeping.

The concept of ma, or of negative space, and the simplicity inherent in the Zen belief system both shaped the way the Japanese approached interiors... and indeed nearly every element of their lives. Notice how there is a tremendous amount of open space, or interval between objects in the room above. Psychologically and spiritually, this allows space for the imagination, for living, for an actuality that goes beyond simply a person in a space. This attention to ma was, and to a great degree still is, an integral part of life in Japan. Notice the long and large inset niche in the wall below... it is meant simply to hold a sumi (a special Japanese black ink) calligraphic scroll or perhaps a painting on silk, and a small seasonal ikebana floral arrangement. This follows the Japanese idea of awareness and contemplation induced by certain objects.

Another very important aspect of Japanese interiors was and is the idea of inside and outside and the symbiotic relationship between the two. I mentioned that shoji screens are used to close off rooms. But the converse is true as well: shoji screens are used to open up rooms to each other or to walkways and views beyond, linking rooms and linking nature to the rest of the house. The Zen rock garden is a vital feature, one that exemplifies all the ideas we have been discussing: ma or empty space, objects that stimulate awareness or contemplation, and a connection to nature. Rock gardens are meant to look like mountains rising out of fog or islands in a sea. The asymmetrical arrangement of varied and unusually shaped rocks is an example of the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, or the idea that imperfection and the randomness found in nature instead of imposed uniformity is what creates true beauty.

Above: A view of the rock garden at Koyasan, a Buddhist monastery.

Above: Ryoan-ji, a Zen temple in Kyoto, features one of the most abstract rock gardens in Japan.

Despite all this talk of space and an absence of furniture, there were indeed wooden pieces of furniture. In addition to small, low tables that could be used as Buddhist prayer tables or to hold smaller altars...

...there were the altars themselves. More modest homes naturally possessed modest altars but wealthy homes boasted large, intricate, and gilt-covered altars large enough to stand on their own.

And of course any household in any period needed--and we still need!--storage. The earliest examples of Japanese storage pieces show up in the 8th century in the form of wooden chests called tansu. These chests were often plain but could be covered with iron strapping or decorative iron work. Another common feature: handles on the sides so the piece could be moved out of the house quickly in case of fire (which unfortunately happened frequently with homes being made of wood and rice paper).

A variation of the tansu is the mizuya, or kitchen storage chest. This held any and all kitchen objects behind convenient sliding doors.

A very popular variation on the tansu is the kaidan tansu or step tansu which looks--and functions--like a staircase. It first appeared in the 1700s.

When looking for actual Japanese antiques, keep in mind that not much has survived before the Edo period. Such items are rare and quite expensive. What you will find will be pieces from the Edo period (1603-1867) but more likely from the Meiji (1868-1912) or Taisho (1912-1926) eras.

Happy designing!