Jesse Rudolph and Joëlle Kütner, the designers behind Ome Dezin, fully agree. The Los Angeles–based design studio has featured several paper lights in their projects. “We’ve noticed that many people are starting to prefer low-light emission options instead of traditional overhead lighting,” Rudolph and Kütner affirm in an email—whether from a pendant, a floor lamp, or beyond.
As Bomi Jin previously pointed out to us, though, people seem hungry for different styles of lighting beyond the classic Noguchi lantern (or their many dupes) these days. And indeed, over the past year or so, I’ve noticed more and more modern iterations of these paper-thin lamps pop up at galleries, design fairs like New York City’s Collectible and Copenhagen’s 3daysofdesign, in homes, and showrooms. Though they share some of the same qualities as earlier icons in the space—ambient warmth, a lightweight feel, handmade construction, and translucency—they’re a little looser around the edges, more playful, more experimental with shape and color.
Two prominent examples are Bennet Schlessinger’s wasp nest-style paper lamps and Minjae Kim’s plantlike fiberglass works—both of which have been displayed at the Marta Gallery. In contrast to the gridded, geometric style of a Noguchi lamp, Critton says that Schlessinger’s work hews to more cocoon-like, organic shapes that “escape the grid,” while Kim’s lights manipulate fiberglass into sculptural shapes.