About Me

Matt Chapuis handcrafts lighted wooden sculptures – reinterpretations of traditional Japanese Andon lamps, incorporating elements from Chinese lattice window designs and structures found in nature. My lamps are both sculptural and functional, providing warm background lighting for inspired living spaces.

Just as in traditional Andon lamps, wood and paper are the primary components. I seek out unusual, handmade papers for my shades, as well as rich, beautiful woods for the structural parts of the lamps. Some woods, like elm and sycamore, are reclaimed from local trees that would have gone to the landfill. I mill, dry and prepare this lumber myself.

Origins

When I was a child, my mother gave me an imported Japanese Andon lamp, formed of four miniature Shoji screens. This was the same sort of lamp one can now find in any Asian Import shop. Back then, however, this exotic object at my bedside represented the mysterious East, its filtered light transforming my room into a space of intimate contemplation.

In my early twenties, I took up woodworking partly as a hobby and partly of necessity: the fine wooden furniture I wanted was far too expensive for my budget! After a stereo cabinet and a few picture frames, I decided to make a copy of my beloved Andon lamp. I had discovered sources for fine paper (another passion) and interesting woods, so I decided I would improve on the original Andon with amaranth wood and sections of bold, chunky washi paper. My early joinery was atrocious, but I managed to fashion the hard amaranth into a workable lamp.

After this first piece, I decided to change the design and build another. I liked the proportions of the original, but I felt the rectangular, serene Shoji grid could just as well take on other patterns. Little did I know cultures all over Asia have been perfecting the art of lattice design for millennia.

Lattice

I discovered my first unusual lattice designs in Daniel Sheets Dye’s wonderful book, "A Grammar of Chinese Lattice". It caught my eye at a local bookstore and I bought it on the spot.

Daniel Sheets Dye, an American, taught at the University of Chengdu, China in the early 1900’s. Dye was fascinated by Chinese lattice ‘windows’ – not windows in the Western sense, but assemblies of interlocking wooden sticks fashioned into repeating patterns, allowing light in and keeping intruders out. For centuries, Chinese craftsmen outdid each other with the elegance and complexity of their designs, often incorporating abstract elements from the worlds of Man and Nature.

In the early 1900’s, China was rapidly replacing its traditional windows with modern glass. The old windows were being discarded by the thousands. Thankfully, Dye made it his mission to record the best of these window designs. He collected lattice designs, cataloged and organized them, and in 1937, published them in a book.

Dye organized his collection of lattice designs into families, coining names for each. One family he called “Ice Ray”, because it loosely resembles the cracks that form in newly formed ice. Unlike other lattice patterns, Ice Rays have no true symmetry. They appear to be regular patterns, but are not. They follow no obvious geometric formula and depend entirely on the skill and design sense of the craftsman who made them.

Elegant Geometry

Educated as a nuclear physicist, my late father was enamored of elegant geometric figures, like M.C. Escher’s drawings and the more complex Platonic solids. He constructed large wooden models of dodecahedrons and icosahedrons, and hung them from the living room ceiling as decorative objects. I remember he even planned to make one into a lamp, but he never saw this step to completion.

Many shapes in Nature, like those of gemstones and nautilus shells, can be summed up in simple mathematical formulas. I think humans have an innate ability to detect the geometry of Nature, and we enjoy discovering its rules and laws. But the actual patterns we see vary from the formulas: Ideal organic growth is disrupted by impurities and disease - The gemstone forms around an inclusion, the plant grows around a stone. Growth proceeds as efficiently as possible, but it will adapt where it has to. Between order and chaos lies a pleasant middle ground that I find most interesting.

An Ice Ray design reminds me of an orderly growth pattern tempered by exposure to real-world conditions. My desert lamps show the organic, seemingly random growth patterns of wood, framed within a perfect man-made square.

I aim to represent the tension between order and chaos.