The work of Japanese-Canadian designer Oki Sato – founder of Tokyo design studio Nendo – is something that frankly I rarely encounter. Aside from being eco-friendly, beautiful, functional and infinitely well made pendant lights, the mission behind his work is about revealing aha (!) moments in our mundane daily activities.

Take for instance his “farming-net” light pendants.  Made from shaping, forming and heat-treating agricultural nets used to cover fruits and vegetables in the field to protect them from weather and pests, these lights float gently in the breeze … like Japanese paper lanterns.

They take visual space, but their lightness makes them poetic.  And the aha (!) moment comes when you experience them in your space and realize what they’re made from.   Something like this would unlikely come from our Western background, but in the East, with their heightened philosophical sense of human existence, it makes perfect sense.  Thank you Nendo!

PS: Thank you for stopping by and reading my feature today.  I love what I do as an interior designer and art advisor, and it’s my hope that through these blog posts I’m enriching and heightening your aesthetic sensibility towards art, design and fabulous interiors in some way ~ Richard Rabel (a.k.a. the modern sybarite)