When we saw Japanese design studio YOY‘s beautifully minimal lamp shade made out of a single sheet of paper, we thought YAY!. We could make a version of that lovely paper shade now that we’ve found a pleasing and bright LED bulb. Since LEDs don’t get hot like incandescent bulbs, we can fashion shades out of paper without danger of fire. (You can hold an “on” LED in your hand without getting burned. We even tested out the idea, placing a sheet of copy paper on some lit LED bulbs for half an hour, without even a scorch mark.)

YOY’s shade is a perfect concept for our love of mutable and makeshift lighting, that we can change as we like.

Yasuko Furukawa
Yasuko Furukawa

It can be affixed to a wall like a poster with tape or pins. An LED light hides inside in-between two slices in the paper sheet. Although YOY doesn’t give exact dimensions, their photographs of the paper cuts give a good idea of how the shade is made:

YOY paper lamp light shade
Yasuko Furukawa

Yasuko Furukawa
Yasuko Furukawa

In YOY’s version, they use a pretty flat small LED that wouldn’t give much illumination. We envision using a standard ceramic wall socket with chain, which we already have leftover from our renovation, paired with a Lunette shade.

porcelain wall socket pull chain

….in league with a screw-in swivel socket base that would place the bulb vertically and fit the space in the shade.

 

swivel vertical light socket

 

But the biggest lesson we take from this is that LEDs (even 100-watt equivalents) allow us to fabricate all sorts of shades out of paper. And then we imagine the way different papers might cast different kinds of light…

via DesignBoom 

 

 

 

 

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