Rosa Bertoli, writing for Wallpaper:

Precisely engineered and crafted by Balmuda’s team in Tokyo, the design originated from Ive’s quest for a lantern for his sailboat. ‘I have been sailing since I was a little boy, and when you are on the water, your connection to nature and the elements is so clear. I think there’s something about using a lantern in these extreme conditions,’ he told Wallpaper*. ‘I was surprised that I couldn’t find something that could survive in extreme maritime conditions.’

His design is quietly familiar, with a silhouette recalling vintage Fresnel lamps – although Ive was careful to create a design that wasn’t nostalgic. ‘The reason this feels familiar isn’t because we took elements that previously existed. The reason it is familiar is humanity and ingenuity.’

Ive’s language is a bit nauseating at this point, but I suppose he’s earned it.

The attention to detail as described here harkens back to so many finely-tuned Apple products:

Terao’s team had already worked on a portable lantern, which became the starting point for the collaboration’s lighting element. And the light given by the ‘Sailing Lantern’ is both precise and poetic: as the dimming dial is turned on, the low light starts with a pink-red glow, quietly growing in intensity until it reaches its full illumination with a white-blue tint. This, Terao explains, is the same effect of the previous lantern he produced, achieved thanks to a series of red and white LEDs that can be controlled as the light is dimmed, to create an effect that is as close to natural light, or fire, as an industrially produced light can be.

‘It’s the same that you find with flames: lower flames are red, and as they become hotter, they turn blue. They are the colours of nature,’ notes Terao. Switching off the lantern is a pleasure in itself, with the light going off slowly, almost imperceptibly.

This, Ive notes, is a consequence of his design process, driven by language as much as design. ‘I can only draw a small percentage of the characteristics of this object, but I can write about many more. You don’t switch off a candle or a bonfire. So when you use a word like extinguish, that to me is so open: the possibilities, the provocation. And I think when you switch this off, the feel of the mechanism and the sound and then the glow just gently goes. That’s what makes us happy.’