Dutch designers Kamiel (born 1988) and Martijn Blom (born 1984)—graduates of furniture making and photography, and architecture and business degrees in Amsterdam, respectively— established their studio Blom & Blom in Amsterdam in 2012. United by their appreciation for industrial style interiors, the brothers launched Blom & Blom with a range of impeccably refurbished industrial lighting that they had collected from abandoned factories and warehouses. In 2013, the first Blom & Blom collection of restored industrial lamps and accessories was shown in a pop-up gallery in an old slaughterhouse in Amsterdam. The following year, in 2014, the Blom & Blom showroom was opened in the Disteldorp neighborhood of Amsterdam—the store has since been lauded by Elle Magazine, Culture Trip, and Singapore Air’s SilverKris Magazine, amongst others, as one of the best design spots in Amsterdam. As the brand has grown, the brothers expanded beyond their Heritage collection of one-of-a-kind restored pieces to introduce their own Blom & Blom Editions collection; a range of hand-crafted, contemporary light objects and design accessories.
The Blom & Blom Editions range is inspired by the functional elegance and historical patina of industrial spaces; as the designer duo explains, “we transform ‘ordinary’ industrial objects into phenomenal design—by taking them beyond their original purpose and into a new dimension, we aim to reveal the essence and purity of the object itself.” Take the Jellyfish (2016) collection of pendant and wall lamps, for example; the series came about when the brothers stumbled upon an abandoned laboratory in eastern Germany, where they were thrilled to discover a large stock of perfectly preserved laboratory glassware. The resulting lighting collection embodies an effortlessly minimalist, contemporary chic—and would look at home in almost any style of interior—and yet with the original laboratory markings and other fitting details, the pieces retain an echo of their former utilitarian existence. Similarly, the Golden Woodpecker (2018) wall light takes prosaic materials—in this case, a brass pipe, frosted acrylic cover, and a composite base of recycled fabric waste—and transforms them into an elegant, slim-lined piece of lighting that somehow seems to straddle the Bauhaus, industrial, and contemporary design genres.
Blom & Blom has been involved in interior and lighting design collaborations on residential, business, and events spaces, including the MINT Fair in Amsterdam in 2014; the Taste of Amsterdam festival in 2013; the Generator Hostel, Design Agency; Roebling’s restaurant in Amsterdam; the Hutspot retail chain in the Netherlands, and many more. In 2018, Blom & Blom presented the Starfish Lamp (2018) by Sandra Planken and Blom & Blom at Milan Design Week in a collaboration with Studio Noun. All Blom & Blom pieces are handcrafted in Amsterdam by a team of artisans, designers, and engineers; the studio also works on custom lighting concepts for architects and interior designers.
