Akari Scarf for The Noguchi Museum
Here is some light for you: a scarf designed for The Noguchi Museum inspired by artist Isamu Noguchi’s Akari lamp. Noguchi's iconic lights softly gleam like fishing lamps on Japan's Nagara River at night – or so he said – and were named Akari, meaning light as illumination and, why not, also hint at weightlessness. The Noguchi Museum explains: "Like the beauty of falling leaves and the cherry blossom, Noguchi wrote, Akari are 'poetic, ephemeral, and tentative.' "
Akari Scarf
72 x 21 inches. silk-modal fiber.
Noguchi's legendary mid-century Akari Lamp (below) launched the commission of the Akari Scarf – in collaboration with architect Andrea Salvini – for The Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, New York City. Just as the three-dimensional embroidery of the scarf mimics the Akari Lamp's bamboo structure, so, too, the translucent silk-modal fiber evokes the airy quality of the lamp's handmade mulberry paper.