New Light Pottery brings its Japanese designs to Denmark

Despite the geographical distance, Danish and Japanese design have many similarities. Honest, quality materials are preferred over the latest bells and whistles and simple is always better. This applies both to PP Møbler, one of the veterans of the Danish furniture industry, and to the Japanese lighting manufacturer New Light Pottery. From Tuesday, October 22nd, New Light Pottery will present its lamps together with PP’s Furniture at PP’s flagship store in Copenhagen. This is the first time New Light Pottery’s lamps have been shown outside of Japan and it is a unique opportunity to experience their lamps first hand.

New Light Pottery arrives in Denmark

When New Light Pottery decided to test the waters outside the Japanese archipelago, they immediately set their sights on Denmark.

“I have always been a fan of Danish and Scandinavian design.” “When it comes to lighting, there are so many wonderful brands from Denmark that I was excited to see how our lights would be received here,” explains Hiroyuki Nagatomi, one of the two designers behind the brand , while he sets up the exhibition.

Katja Kejser Pedersen, creative director of PP Møbler, explains the reasons for opening the showroom for New Light Pottery: “I could immediately see that the lamps fit beautifully with the PP collection.” “Made from real materials with great attention to detail and a strong focus on good craftsmanship.”

The exhibition was designed by Miki Morita from Copenhagen and Suguru Kobayashi from Mok Architects. You commissioned washi Artist Wataru Hatano has designed a series of paper panels in three different colors that serve as both a room divider and a background for the lamps. The rough texture and earth-like colors of the panels contrast with the beautiful finish of both the furniture and the lamps.

There is also a short film projected on a handmade paper screen showing the process of making some lamps. All New Light Pottery lamps are handmade in small factories throughout Japan, each specializing in a unique material or process. The solid brass lamps such as the Bullet series are manufactured in Toyama by the Nousaku company, which has been processing brass and copper for more than a hundred years. Each lamp is cast using sand molds and then machined using CNC. Some of them are further dyed to a burnt black by Iromasa, another company also based in Toyama. The finish is achieved by applying and heating traditional Japanese lacquer to the brass sold and is a unique finish from the region.

The exhibition features approximately half of the New Light Pottery portfolio with several brand new lamps. Available in both pendant and wall/ceiling versions, the SOL series is a refreshing take on a traditional Japanese paper lantern. Both the shape (Nagatomi was inspired by the traditional Japanese spinning top for the conical design of both the pendant and wall/ceiling lamps) and the combination of the simple paper with high-quality brass fittings give the lamps a modern expression that you don’t really see before in paper form.

There is also a new lamp made of bent beech veneer called Moth. “I’m a big fan of Sori Yanagi’s butterfly stool, and this was intended as a sort of homage to him and the stool, hence the name,” Nagatomi explains. The structure is simple (like the butterfly stool) and consists of three identical wooden parts connected at the edges with six brass bolts.

The modern and simple design of the lamps from New Light Pottery goes wonderfully with the timeless furniture from PP Møbler. And as with furniture, it is the quality craftsmanship that brings the design to life.