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. Noguchi explains, "Like the beauty of falling leaves and the cherry blossom, 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.

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