Soft-spoken and grounded, Stephen White has little interest in accolades. “The work was always appreciated by those who knew it,” he says with a shrug. “I never felt unrecognized.”
Now, at last, the design world’s attention has arrived, just in time for White’s retirement. The 86-year-old recently handed off his practice to his daughter, Simone White, a transition that coincided with what Simone calls “a dramatic increase in interest.”
In recent years, several AD100 designers have helped elevate White’s profile by installing his fixtures in rooms worthy of his artistry. “I was struck immediately by the quiet poetry of Stephen’s work,” Pamela Shamshiri says of discovering White through LA’s Twentieth Gallery. “His pieces have a natural presence, almost like an animal.” Echoing that sentiment, Heidi Caillier says she was attracted to a certain “organic element that can be hard to achieve. They make a room feel special on their own.” And Elizabeth Roberts, who commissioned a light for the Ulla Johnson flagship in New York City, notes: “Stephen’s fixtures add softness and sensitivity to any space. They have soul, stemming from the love and care that goes into creating them.”
Each numbered fixture bears White’s identifying mark—a rising sun stamp he carved in the late 1960s using a flathead screwdriver and soapstone. The insignia seems especially apt for a designer who conceived his first collection in polar gloom.
In 1966, as a young Air Force engineering officer, White deployed to Alaska’s Cape Lisburne station and spent two winters 160 miles above the Arctic Circle. The sun would set in mid-November and reemerge in late January. “It’s not totally black, just a deep gray,” White says.
While on temporary duty in Anchorage, White approached a woman at a gallery making papier-mâché lanterns. Earlier in his military career, inspired by Japanese designs, White had assembled a rudimentary pendant to brighten drab temporary housing, using salvaged wood strips and paper coated in airplane dope, a heavy glue for fabric-covered aircraft wings. He told the gallerist about his experiments. Intrigued, she offered White his own show, sight unseen.
Over the next three months at Cape Lisburne, White designed 18 lights that coaxed new shapes from wood while perfecting his papering technique. “That became the platform,” he says, noting that most of his subsequent work references those early iterations.
White sold two pieces, kept a couple, and distributed the rest to friends. Upon being discharged from the service, he went on a Hawaiian vacation that turned into a yearslong stay. He apprenticed under Honolulu architects Tom Wells and Leo S. Wou, while sculpting lights at night. He married, bought an A-frame on Oahu’s North Shore, and suspended works in progress from the rafters as baby Simone crawled below.
Gallery shows followed as White left architecture for lighting. Isamu Noguchi visited one exhibit and requested lunch, hoping to purchase a light. “I’ll pay whatever you want,” Noguchi said. White charged the usual $65—plus one of Noguchi’s own lanterns.
After seven years in Hawaii, White moved to California, New England, and Europe before settling in Oregon—continuing to craft light sculptures for hotels, shopping centers, country clubs, and private homes. A few years ago, when his hands developed a tremor, Simone began helping and backed into apprenticing, learning through tactile repetition since no drawings exist.
A singer-songwriter and former actor, Simone relocated from New York City to a farm in northwestern Connecticut with her longtime partner (and now husband), bespoke furniture designer Richard Wrightman, for more space to work. White visits each summer to transfer skills, advising as Simone assembles frames and laminates surfaces. A single piece might take 300 hours to paper. “It’s surprisingly enjoyable, almost meditative,” Simone says of building each translucent skin. “Even the smell feels familiar, like home.”
Unlike paper lanterns, which degrade over time, these pieces last. And their diffuse glow, as flattering as candlelight, is bewitching. When vintage examples of White’s work turn up at auction, they sell fast, often above estimate. New pieces reach $33,000 for the largest works. For now, Simone has declined gallery representation, preferring direct commissions, and will soon open next year’s waitlist.
“At first I was a little cocky,” she says of attempting new configurations. “But there are only certain ways things will curve.” Most buyers request the Kaimana, Kukui, or Seed—three particularly voluptuous models. “I’m making Stephen’s designs because they’re really good,” Simone says. “He spent many years seeing what the medium can do.”
White expects his daughter will outgrow him someday. “I haven’t told Simone,” he says, “but I hope I live long enough to see her do original work.” For now, he has gifted her both the soapstone stamp and his original pad of vivid red Chinese ink, purchased in Honolulu’s Chinatown in the late 1960s. “It still works,” the artist marvels—much like his alluring creations.
This story appears in the AD100 issue. Never miss a story when you subscribe to AD.
