Noguchi Akari lantern, 1950

Japanese designer said to start a home, all that was needed was ‘a room, a tatami [mat] and Akari’

Trend-watchers are predicting a Japanese influence on interiors in 2017 which sounds austere and difficult until you think that many first flats, student digs or starter homes feature at least one Japanese inspired element – a paper lampshade.

The designer who refined the look in a strikingly architectural way was Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988), the Japanese-American sculptor who was so prolific and well-regarded that he had his first retrospective in the United States in 1968 at the Whitney Museum in New York. In 1950 he designed his first paper lanterns inspired by traditional Japanese Gifu lanterns.

He called his take on the old form “Akari”, meaning light but also suggesting weightlessness, and his abstract shapes for standing lamps and shades were clearly sculptural. They were made in the traditional way of handmade paper with a fine bamboo frame, with a metal wire stretcher and support.

Noguchi’s philosophy of home was admirably Spartan – all you needed, he said, to start a home was “a room, a tatami [mat] and Akari”. There are many paper lanterns and few are Noguchi: to spot a genuine one, look for the stamp of a red sun, half-moon with the word Japan written under the symbol.