Jony Ive designs sailing lantern to mimic "warmth and emotional resonance" of a live flame

Jony Ive's studio LoveFrom has collaborated with Japanese manufacturer Balmuda to create a nautical lantern, driven by the designer's own struggles to find a portable LED light for his yacht.

According to the studio, the Sailing Lantern combines the contemporary convenience of a rechargeable battery and the heavy-duty construction needed for a ship lamp.

Ive approached Balmuda founder Gen Terao to help him create the light after the lifelong sailing enthusiast struggled to find a modern LED torch to use in his yacht.

"I would have just bought a lantern for my yacht – I wanted to, but there isn't anything on the market," he told Boat International. "So instead, I spent two years hard at work designing it."

The resulting design hearkens back to the construction of a traditional Fresnel lamp, with a faceted shade used to project its light across the seas and a metal lens guard protecting the glass from impact.

But here, the archetype is reimagined using modern marine-grade stainless steel with gleaming gold detailing and a textured polyester strap designed to resist sun, salt and oil.

"Our lantern was created and built for maritime conditions," Ive explained.

"While the materials, form and product architecture are new, there is a reassuring familiarity to the nautical lanterns and Fresnel lamps of the past whose designs evolved to address the same unforgiving functional requirements."

One of the key challenges, aside from the durability, was the quality of the light itself, which Ive wanted to capture the "warmth and emotional resonance" typically associated with a live flame.

To achieve this, the team combined a series of red and white LEDs inside the light source that can be combined in different ratios.

This allows the light to grow from a dim, warm-toned glow to a bright white beacon with the turn of a single flower-shaped button. Once the light is turned off, it dims and dies gradually, much like a real flame.

Following age-old nautical design principles, Ive said the Sailing Lantern was "designed to last a lifetime" and easy to maintain, disassemble and repair.

Since founding LoveFrom in 2019, after nearly 30 years at Apple, the designer has applied his typically pared-back, detail-oriented sensibilities to a range of different product designs, from turntables and Moncler jackets to origami clown noses for Red Nose Day.

Most recently, Ive made headlines for teaming up with tech company OpenAI to envision the future of AI hardware.

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