Spotlight: Pampshade (Panthem)

Panthem was tucked in the corner of a side street in Kobe, Japan, between an apartment building and a pharmacy. Its wheat-colored brick wall and the greenery in front of the building felt friendly and inviting, but the recessed glass doors, reflecting the outside, imparted an air of mystery. As we stepped inside, we were greeted by the warm aroma of bread. It was not a bakery we’d entered, however, but a studio, where artist Yukiko Morita and her team turned her community’s leftover bread into lamps, clocks, and decorative pieces that could last for years.

The Paper Mouse started carrying Pampshade’s lamps made of real bread in 2021. They were an instant hit when they arrived, loved by customers and staff alike. While planning our trip to Japan this past March, we were overjoyed by an invitation to see the studio where they were made.

At the front of the studio was a meeting area and showroom. A feast of bread lamps sat on tables, and a giant “pandelier” of baguettes hung from the ceiling. Further back, through a set of sliding doors, was the studio itself. Before reaching the workspace, we walked through a small anteroom lined with shelves and shelves of bread. These loaves of all shapes and sizes would wait here, drying for days, before they were sturdy enough to be hollowed. The majority of the bread was leftovers purchased from local bakeries, though some was baked to order. Finally, a few experimental shapes were created in the studio itself.

In school, Yukiko had worked part-time in a bakery. It was there that she fell in love with bread, and where she was inspired to create lamps upon seeing the sun shine through a loaf whose interior she had eaten. The idea developed into reality in 2010, both as a way to create beautiful objects, and to prevent the waste of unsold bread at the end of each day. The brand Pampshade was born, a play on the words “pan”, meaning “bread” in Japanese and many other languages, combined with “lampshade.” Yukiko opened her studio in her hometown of Kobe in 2016, as the popularity of the lamps increased. A few years later, the Panthem corporation was established to unite the Pampshade brand, her NAAAAN time clock brand, and her Sliced bread display objects under one banner. 

At the center of the studio was a long wooden work table. One team member sat near the end, carefully cutting away the inside of a loaf. Each piece of bread had to be carved to the perfect thinness so that light would shine through. Another team member crouched by a machine in the next room, preparing the antiseptic and antifungal coating for preserving the bread. Once hollowed, coated, and dried, any blemishes in the resin would be cut away by hand, one by one. Each piece would then be painstakingly sanded to a soft matte finish. Finally, it would be ready for lights to be installed. Yukiko told us that not just the bread, but the circuit boards for the lights, were designed in-house. She pulled one out of a tray to show us; the small LED turned on and off as she connected it to a battery and pressed a switch.

After the studio tour, Yukiko had one more surprise for us. As we sat down at the showroom table for tea, she presented us with two beautiful little packets of snacks. Nakami Rusk, she explained, was flavored croutons made from the bread hollowed out from the lamps. They were crunchy and delicious. We could feel the love for bread in every corner of the studio; not a bit was wasted.

We left the Panthem studio to visit a final spot in the neighborhood. Boulangerie Récolte Rond Point was one of the local bakeries where Pampshade’s bread was sourced. Upon entering, we immediately saw several of Yukiko’s lamps illuminating the coffee counter. The warmth of fresh bread greeted our senses. Customers milled through the shop, looking for a daily loaf, a pastry, or a moment of calm with a cup of coffee. We’d now witnessed the entire life cycle of a Pampshade bread lamp. With a bag of pastries in our hands, and a new appreciation for the curious treasures in our shop, we left the bakery, ready to eat.