O / 04
The Light I Remember
NOTES ON PLACE, MEMORY, AND AN OBJECT THAT BROUGHT THEM HOME
I didn’t choose this lamp for its form at first. I chose it for the feeling it stirred—a kind of calm I recognized immediately, the way you recognize someone you’ve met before, but can’t quite place.
Stamátios Fragos designed it as an ode to Greco-Roman columns, all structure and rhythm, but in my home it brings me somewhere else entirely. The walnut slats remind me of Japan—of walking through old wooden houses in Kanazawa, where light slipped through narrow gaps in ways that made the rooms feel alive.
There was a morning I still think of:
“Soft light pushing through the paper walls at Itsukushima. I remember sitting on the floor, watching the shadows shift as if the whole building were breathing.”
When I turn this lamp on at night, that memory returns—the quiet glow, the gentle filtering of light, the sense of being held inside something simple and intentional.
The lamp stands here now like a small relic of those travels. Not a souvenir, but a reminder of the places that shaped the way I see. It holds a kind of stillness I’ve been carrying with me since Japan—the sense that light isn’t just illumination, but atmosphere, time, and memory woven together.
It’s strange how an object can do that—become a doorway back to a moment you didn’t realize you’d been keeping.
OBJECT: PARÂLLILO LAMP
ARTIST: STAMÂYIOS FRAGOS
MATERIALS: WALNUT
MADE IN: CANADA
PHOTOGRAPHY: TAKAHIRO IGARASHI