from Nendo website www.nendo.jp :

Wire netting (‘kana-ami’) cooking utensils made by Kyoto artisans have been employed to create Kyoto’s delicate, exquisite cuisine for over a thousand years. We created this lighting fixture in collaboration with Kanaami-Tsuji, a Kyoto-based wire netting firm that preserves the craft’s traditions and develops it for contemporary living and future generations. The design allows the handcrafted shade’s beautiful woven pattern to reflect on the ceiling, an idea that hardly originated with us: indeed, Kyoto wire netting’s design is said to have originated with the beauty of the shadow of the wire netting used to lift blocks of tofu from boiling water in a famous Kyoto dish, yudofu. We finished the surface with a powder paint to bring out the silhouette even more beautifully.