While the traditional image most of us hold of a Japanese Stone Lantern might be crisp clean lines of a well carved and well proportioned lantern, a more rustic look can also be extremely beautiful. After all, traditionally, only the richest people would be able to afford to pay a master stone mason to create a work of art embodied and formed into a lantern, the average person who wanted such a lantern would have to make do with what they found or could cobble together themselves. The roof of the lantern would probably not be wonderfully carved and ornately decorated with symetrical lines. Instead it might simply be a piece of stone that was flat enough on one side to sit on top of the lightbox and wide enough to provide the basic protection from the elements on top of the lightbox.

A rustic style of stone lantern would tend towards functionality over asthetics, but somehow, even in the rough and tumble of a scrounged together lantern, they would still retain some of that archetypal shape and elegance that Ishidoros provide. Simple shaped lightboxes would be better – a square shaft and light box is likely and the roof of the lantern might not have it’s tell tale “knob” on the top.

None the less, a rustic boulder on top of a lightbox makes a fetching garden ornament. And if you feel adventurous, you could even make your own!