Concept
Lucerna & Obscura investigate the regenerative and narrative potential of salmon leather within contemporary lighting design. The project repositions fish skin not as a novel luxury material, but as one with cultural continuity, shaped by ancestral knowledge and ecological care.
In contrast to commercial framings that overlook its lineage, this body of work builds upon tanning traditions practiced by Sámi and Ainu communities, adapting them into a slow, replicable process using accessible, biodegradable ingredients. The resulting fish leather artefacts are not merely functional but act as carriers of history, revealing the richness of a material often dismissed as waste.
The paired outcomes; Lucerna and Obscura; embody a conceptual duality. Lucerna is a luminous spiral form, inspired by scrolls and manuscript unrollings, with five embroidered motifs that flow through its translucent surface. Obscura stands in contrast: a dark, hexagonal monolith that conceals its internal structure until illuminated, its spirals revealed only in light. Together, they explore memory, transformation, and cultural continuity; not only through their shapes and stitching, but in how they hold, conceal, and transmit light.
Accompanying these artefacts are a set of supporting materials: a transparent sample board, a coded tagging system, and a printed tanning process booklet; each offering tools for others to engage with and reproduce the process, and to understand fish leather as a practice, not just a surface.