Like many people, I like soft light and use lampshades of Japanese paper from the successful Akari series designed by the American sculptor Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988), certainly the artist's greatest influence on individual lives, especially at home. Some of his own upbringing is described in this book, which tells the story of his mother.
Leonie Gilmour was a remarkable woman, not merely because her chance encounter with the Japanese poet Yone Noguchi (1875-1947) in New York produced a gifted artist, but because of the free-thinking and independence that made it possible. Born in 1873 in New York to a hardworking American mother and an idealistic immigrant father from the north of Ireland, she was raised in straitened economic circumstances, and attended a Workingman's School for poorer children.