14 DAY TRIAL // The dandelion, otherwise known as blowball, lion's-tooth, cankerwort, milk-witch, monks-head, priest's-crown, puff-ball, yellow-gowan and Irish daisy, isn't exactly what you'd expect to find in a lamp, but cinematographer Takao Inoue made it happen.
From the above list of names borne by the common plant, it's puff-ball that interests us, that stage of the flower's life when all the silky pappi are open, forming a parachute.
Children like to pick those up and blow on the puff, to send the pappi flying everywhere, but Takao Inoue went the opposite route.
He took the parachutes as they were and carefully preserved them until he was able to encase them in transparent acrylic material.
That's right, the man took live plants and successfully encased them in transparent blocks not unlike those sold at souvenir shops.
He named the resulting, compact home lamps, OLED Tampopo. Tampopo is the Japanese term for dandelion.
Takao Inoue embedded an OLED light in the stem of the flower. So, when it's night out and your room is shrouded in darkness, you can just turn on one of these and bask in the dandelions' glorious glow.
The designer didn't outright say it, but the lamps seem to be wirelessly powered, since there are no wires in the photos taken of the things. Or maybe they are battery-powered somehow, with no way to replace the batteries.
That would make the lamps one-shot wonders, and without knowing what the battery life is we can't speculate on whether or not the items would still sell well in the eventuality of a marketing release.
However, after seeing wireless recharging technology in the Motorola Moto 360 smartwatch, we aren't ruling out the possibility of something similar being utilized here.
It's unlikely in something so small, especially since we can see that if there is a battery or a wireless tapping circuit, it's got to be somewhere in the flower stem or flower itself.
Anyway, the Tampopo is supposed to remind you of old memories of picking up dandelions' puff when outdoors. That's what their creator said when describing them.
Unfortunately, if Takao Inoue plans to turn the OLED lamps over to device mass producers and retailers, he didn't give a time frame for their availability, except the vague “soon.” At least we can rest assured that this isn't one of those things that get revealed to the world only to never be heard of again. Many projects get nipped in the bud, so to speak.
