Most lamp manufacturers definitely don’t take loaves of bread into consideration when looking for materials for the shades, but Kyoto-based Yukiko Morita is not most manufacturers.
The fact that Yukiko Morita, a 27-year old corporate worker from Kyoto, has developed an obsession for bread becomes rather obvious when seeing her Pampshades. These unique lighting fixtures have shades made from real French baguettes and even their name hints at this artist’s food fixation. The concept Pampshades is a play at words referring to shades and “pan,” the Japanese word for “bread.”
Morita points out that her love for bread, as inexplicable as it may seem, has been in fact determined by the shape, and not the taste of the loaves of bread: “I think loaves are really cute. I love their round curves. I wanted a bread display in my room so I could admire it all the time. That’s how I came up with this shape.”
The idea is not particularly new. Morita came up with this concept while majoring in prints at the Kyoto City University of Arts. Everything started while working on a project in a studio. She played around with a French baguette she had brought to eat, and at some point, she placed a piece of the hollow shell before the sunlight. The spectacular effect made her think how a lamp made from real bread would look like, and that’s the spark needed for igniting the artist’s mind. Initially, she placed a light bulb inside a hollowed loaf of bread, but the shell scorched because of the heat.
300 prototypes later, the Japanese artist managed to create the perfect Pampshade. This took Morita a lot of time, as she could only work on this personal project in her spare time. Still, Morita proved that she is determined to create a unique type of lamps. Along the way, she figured out that incandescent light bulbs produce a lot of heat, which in turn damages the bread. To solve this problem, Morita turned to LED light bulbs, which are not only eco-friendly, but also a lot colder.
As evidence that her work is very appreciated, at least in her home country, several shops picked up her Pampshades and started selling them at prices ranging between the equivalent of $35 and $50. Considering the uniqueness of these lighting fixtures, I think the price is very low. Should shops from other continents pick up these products, the prices will definitely be higher than that.
If you liked this post, please check the Paperclip and PizzaKobra lamps that put contortionists to shame, and Lampbrella, the water-activated umbrella for British rainy days.
