The Japanese art of flower arrangement known as Ikebana stresses the form and spirituality of flowers, paying close attention to the parts of flowers that many Westerners ignore, such as the leaves. You can see this aesthetic at play in the Ikebana Flat-panel LED Light designed by Peter Stathis. The light not only pays homage to the blossoming bud, but it also acknowledges the simple beauty of the stem.

Ikebana Flat-panel LED Light. Designed by Peter Stathis.

Flower-Shaped LED Celebrates the Beauty of Nature

Stathis explains the importance of Ikebana as an art form that influenced his creative design: “It recreates nature on a reduced scale.” The sinuous shape of the flower, coupled with the linear grace of the stem, translate well in the Ikebana Light, which seems like an expressionistic reduction of flora everywhere. But the Ikebana LED is also quite modern, “merging poetics with technology, decoration with function, and aesthetics with ideology, in creating a perceived and highly symbolic beauty—a neo-nature for today’s solid-state world.”

Ikebana uses state-of-the-art technology to interpret the ancient Japanese art. Proprietary Front Light Optical Waveguide technology allows the LED to work in ways previously unattainable. The light head has a complete 360-degree range of adjustability, as well as variable height control. Better yet, specialized optics make the light emitted by Ikebana softer, warmer, and more natural; the lamp also eliminates glare and shadowing. Essentially, Ikebana provides the energy efficiency of an LED light without the cold quality.

Ikebana Flat-panel LED Light maintains the beauty of Japanese Ikebana through its attention to shape and line. A sinuous head, straight stem, ovate leaves, and square base illustrate the traditional art with its accentuation of minimalist form.

About the Designer: Peter Stathis is a designtrepreneur and principal of San Francisco-based Virtual Studio. He has been designing lighting for over two decades, and his conceptual lighting pieces have appeared in galleries on both coasts. Work by Stathis is found in the permanent collections of MoMA and the Cooper-Hewitt.