Drawings and printed material, Farfalla, lamp 蝴蝶（燈具）繪圖及印刷資料

Japanese designer Umeda Masanori’s Farfalla (meaning ‘butterfly’ in Italian) is a series of lamps in floor and table models. Umeda’s sketches for the project reveal that he initially planned a hanging pendant version of the design as well. A triangular hood contains the bulb, and two butterfly-wing louvres hang from this component, acting as shades. These ‘wings’ are formed from translucent acrylic, which captures and transmits the light of the bulb between them. The opaque components of the lamp are finished in several colours.



Returning to Japan in 1980 after more than a dozen years in Italy, Umeda founded his own studio and continued to practice with a distinctly postmodern approach to design, inflected by his participation in the Memphis design collective. Exploring bright colours and synthetic materials in his expressive, sculptural work, he often imbues objects with symbolic associations alongside their practical uses.