Bubble Wall Lamp by Motoko Ishii for Staff

The Japanese lighting designer Motoko Ishii (born 1938) studied industrial design at the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and then specialised in the then new field of lighting design. From 1965 to 1967 she worked in lighting design offices in Finland and Germany before founding her own office, Ishii Motoko Design Office, in Tokyo in 1968. She gained international recognition for lighting several pavilions at the Osaka World Expo 1970, including the Electric Power Pavilion, the Takara Beautillion and the Japanese garden, where she worked deliberately with contrasts of light and shadow instead of even illumination for the first time. For the German manufacturer Staff Leuchten in Lemgo she designed numerous pendant and ceiling lamps, including variations of Sputnik chandeliers made of screw-in, modular glass globes.