Visual treat: Softly dimmed lights inside a light box titled Since Day One evoke a sense of intimacy.

A scene in a light box titled Since Day One depicts the silhouettes of lovers with their arms linked as they walk through the drizzling twilight of a deserted place.

The softly dimmed lights inside the light box bring its images to life, evoking a sense of romance.

Since Day One is one of the heartfelt stories told through paper cutouts and lights from Huseinov Light Box.

Huseinov Light Box is the brainchild of Aderizky Huseinov (Deris) who founded his eponymous brand in 2017.

Since he was young, Deris has always had a passion for papercutting; one of his childhood creations was a papercut Christmas tree. As a kid, he honed his craft with hours of cutting papers by using a child-friendly pen-like cutter, a much safer alternative to conventional craft knives.

As an adult, he is happily turning his art practice into a business, even though making light boxes, especially the elaborate ones, requires a long and painstaking production process.

“Depending on the intricacies of their designs, each light box contains between five and 15 layers of hand-cut paper silhouettes; it takes me from about five minutes to one hour to create a layer,” Deris said.

Each paper is meticulously arranged inside a wooden box frame and is lit from behind with LED light strips, creating the mesmerizing scene of a three-dimensional piece. The brightness level and colors of the lights can be changed easily.

Today, Huseinov is probably the only papercut light box brand that is based in Indonesia. Indonesian papercutting artists generally do not combine their artwork with light boxes.

The story of Huseinov Light Box started with a wedding gift request from one of Deris’ best friends who wanted a bespoke lamp combining the beauty of papercutting and light.

The idea of that lamp was inspired by the interior of a silhouette portraits shop in Shibuya, Tokyo, where the lights outside the shop brought the silhouettes inside to life, bewitching passersby.

This made Deris want to learn how to make a papercut light box, something he had never thought about.

After he finished his first artistic lamp for his friend, it took him three years of trial and error before he launched his first commercial papercut light box.  

Under an agreement, every month he sends 15 light boxes to Germany and another 15 to Singapore. As his business grew, Deris took on two artists as his partners. Each design is handmade by the same artist from start to finish.

For the export market, Huseinov sells ready-made products that usually depict animals and forests. However, for the local market, the brand offers custom-made light boxes only.

In the future, Deris plans to combine his papercut lamps with the music box concept.

Deris and his partners can produce fifty lamps at most per month, as the three of them still have their full-time day jobs outside of Huseinov Light Box. Deris himself is a business analyst by day and papercutting artist by night.

The business is passion-driven, as the process is long and difficult and the production costs high, resulting in scant profits. The goods vary in size and are priced from Rp 300,000 for the smallest one to Rp 950,000 ($US22) for the A3 size.

“We use quality materials, for instance, all of our light boxes are made of kayu jati Belanda (Dutch teak wood), hence why the cost of the materials is almost the same as the finished product,” he said.

For Deris, Huseinov is his labor of love. He loves bringing joy to people’s lives through his artwork. Remembering the heartfelt messages he receives from his satisfied customers keeps him motivated — their kind words make all the hard work worthwhile.

“No matter how tired I am sometimes, I cannot stop making papercut light boxes because papercutting is my passion and Huseinov, my brand, is my baby.” (ste)

— Photos courtesy of Huseinov Light Box

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