The best design stories often begin with a constraint. In 2008, two Seattle-based designers — Seth Grizzle and Jonathan Junker — found themselves with a very specific one: a desire to make something beautiful and a studio full of cardboard boxes. What they made from those boxes became the foundation of one of the most distinctive and widely admired lighting studios to emerge in the past two decades.
Graypants — the studio Grizzle and Junker founded — has grown from those first cardboard experiments into a fully realized design practice with studios in Seattle and Amsterdam, producing lighting that is specified by leading interior designers and architects worldwide. But the core commitment that defined those first pieces — to making beautiful objects from materials that the world has in abundance — remains entirely intact. At LoftModern, Graypants represents a design position we find genuinely compelling: the belief that sustainability and beauty are not in tension, and that the most interesting design problems often have the most unexpected solutions.
The Scraplights: Where It All Began
The Scraplight Collection is where the Graypants story begins and, in many ways, where it remains most itself. These pendants — made from layers of recycled corrugated cardboard, CNC-cut and assembled into spherical, faceted, and cylindrical forms of extraordinary geometric complexity — are objects that stop people mid-step. The question is always the same: What is that made of?
The answer — cardboard — is invariably followed by a closer look. And up close, the Scraplights reveal a quality of making that is genuinely surprising. The layers of cardboard, visible at the cut edges of each form, create a visual depth and warmth that no injection-molded plastic or spun-metal shade can produce. The light that passes through the assembled layers is filtered and softened, emerging as a warm, dimensional glow that is the direct product of the material's natural translucency.
The Scraplights are available in a range of forms — the spherical Moon, the elongated Jupiter, the faceted Orion — each of which approaches the geometry of the cardboard construction differently and produces a different quality of light as a result. They work individually, as statement pendants in a kitchen or dining room, or in clusters, where their varied forms create a composition of genuine visual richness.
Beyond Cardboard: The Graypants Material Palette
While the Scraplights remain central to Graypants' identity, the studio has developed a broader material language over the years — one that maintains the commitment to thoughtful material use while expanding into new formal and aesthetic territories.
Their work in metal — particularly the Stellar Collection of brass and steel pendants — demonstrates a design sensibility that translates equally well from cardboard to metal. The Stellar pendants use perforated and folded metal to create light-and-shadow effects that reference the faceted geometries of the Scraplights while achieving a more refined, contemporary aesthetic. These are fixtures for interiors where the cardboard quality of the Scraplights might be too casual, but where the design intelligence that produced them is exactly what's needed.
The studio's work in glass and ceramic extends the material exploration further, producing pieces that benefit from Graypants' particular sensitivity to how materials interact with light — a sensitivity developed through years of working with the most demanding material test case of all: translucent cardboard.
The Design Philosophy: Problems as Opportunities
What unifies Graypants' body of work, across materials and scales, is a design philosophy that treats constraints as creative opportunities rather than limitations. The cardboard origins of the studio are the most dramatic example of this approach, but the same logic applies to every project the studio undertakes: What are the real constraints of this problem? What materials and forms are genuinely appropriate? What can we make that is not merely appropriate, but also genuinely surprising?
This approach produces work that is consistently original without being merely novel — a distinction that matters. Novelty is easy; originality is the result of thinking deeply and making carefully. Graypants' work has both qualities, which is why it continues to attract attention from designers and clients who have seen too much of the former and not enough of the latter.
Sustainability That Actually Means Something
In an era when sustainability claims are often superficial, Graypants' commitment is structural rather than cosmetic. The Scraplights are made from genuinely recycled materials; the studio's production processes are designed to minimize waste; and the objects produced are built to last — which is, ultimately, the most sustainable design decision of all.
For LoftModern's clients who are committed to making environmentally conscious choices without compromising on design quality, Graypants provides one of the most compelling available arguments that these goals are entirely compatible. You do not have to choose between a beautiful object and a responsible one.
Explore Graypants at LoftModern
Discover the full Graypants collection at LoftModern, including the original Scraplight family, the Stellar metal pendants, and the studio's expanding range of table and floor lamps. Our team can help you find the right Graypants piece for your project — and tell you more about the story behind each one.
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