ILKW: Sixty Years of Light, Redesigned from the Bulb Up

BrandsWalk Creative |
Ilkwang Lighting, a.k.a. ILKW was founded in 1962 in Daegu, South Korea. For decades, the company manufactured incandescent bulbs. When LED technology displaced the incandescent market, Ilkwang Lighting made a decision that would redefine what the company was: in 2016, it partnered with Zerosixfour Design Studio to reposition as a design-led lighting brand under the name ILKW.  

The company's own Instagram describes it as Korea's last light bulb company. That framing is not nostalgia. It is the starting point for everything the brand has built since.

The Snowman Series

Development on the Snowman series began in 2021. The first product, the Snowman22 Table, introduced a silhouette built from two gently flattened glass spheres stacked vertically. The glass shade is hand-blown, a process that produces the slightly irregular surface quality that mechanical production cannot replicate. Inside, an LED light source scatters light naturally through the glass, eliminating the concentrated glare typical of direct LED fixtures. The steel base and neck are finely processed, connecting to the glass above with a contrast of weight and softness.

The series first gained public attention at the Seoul Life Design Expo in 2021. From there it expanded across formats: portable, table, floor, pendant, wall, and ceiling, now comprising 14 products in total. The Snowman series is currently available at the MoMA Design Store in New York, Tokyo, and Hong Kong.

At 3 Days of Design 2026

ILKW appeared at this year's festival as part of "Portrait of Korean Living," a joint exhibition with RareRaw and Flat Point at Etage Projects gallery in Copenhagen, running June 10 to 12. Exhibition design was by Swiss studio Gini Moynier, with paintings by Seoul-based artist Jieun Lee. The three brands staged their products together as a single furnished living environment rather than individual brand displays.

ILKW showed the Snowman22 collection alongside the Snowman8 Portable in a new Silver colorway, paired with a newly designed docking station. The Snowman8 is the smallest lamp in the series (80x80x95mm, 85 grams) and uses a magnetic base system compatible with five different accessories: a magnet strap, a floor stand, a wood tray, a pendant mount, and a wall mount. The same lamp reconfigures across all five.

Sixty-three years after its founding as a bulb manufacturer, ILKW brought 14 lighting products to one of Europe's most closely watched design festivals.

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