Light stimulation: Japan inspires Mitate lamps

Dutch design partnership Studio Wieki Somers travelled through Japan, drawing inspiration from local craftsmanship and construction for their seven-strong Mitate collection of lamps. Each uses fragile materials, soft lighting and spherical shapes to evoke a sense of otherness – a coppery sphere recalls sunlight on a Samurai’s helmet, while another transparent orb resembles moonlight through a geisha’s parasol.

The collection takes its name from a Japanese concept of recontextualisation: that by contemplating objects as if they were something else, fresh meaning can emerge. The work is overtly poetic, referencing a fluid interchange of emotional and aesthetic sensations – luminosity, exoticism, nature and an enchanted past. 

Designers are increasingly embracing a cross-disciplinary catalogue of inspiration, from the scientific to the historical and mystical. LS:N Global has identified a muted colour palette which, combined with fine materials and organic shapes, produces a Lunar Grace effect, a temporal alchemy of the delicate and the concrete, the material and the infinite.