The [brief] origin story…
Co-founders Harry & Lu - photo credit: Conor Muir
After years in the planning and months in the building, we launched our website on 10th May 2024. Softly softly it’s the start of getting our wares out into the world. But it took a long old while to get to this point.
It was lockdown of Spring 2020 that planted the seed for Bloc & Boon. We were able to safely leave Hackney where we lived at the time, and spent 3 months with access to a big garden, surrounding countryside and Harry’s Dads workshop. For this we count ourselves incredibly lucky - a little bit of idle in a world that was being turned upside down. Uninterrupted by other commitments [namely full time jobs!] and with free time between all the houseparty/zoom quizzes [thanks furlough!] this precious time allowed us to experiment.
…in a nutshell, Bloc & Boon essentially started with a pandemic and some scraps of pine.
We began with constructing a simple chair, inspired by one of our favourites Pierre Jeanneret, a coffee table [the very same Martin Coffee Table] and a set of three plant stands. We quickly realised we wanted to take this further and that our skills and previous work experience in the creative industries could compliment one another and come together to create something great.
After a few months in Kent, a return to London and a redundancy for Lu from her gallery job later, we really started thinking about what we wanted to pursue and how we wanted to do it. The ideal was to develop a brand and get to work on designs between our full time jobs, using open access workshop Bloqs in Tottenham to prototype designs and the ball rolling. But as we all know, reality bites [!] and can swiftly change a lot in a short space of time! It became a bit impossible - the financial pressures of the city, time and energy between working stretched us and things had to go slow. Friends and family were for sure itchy to see us progress, obviously as were we! - but the timing obviously wasn’t quite right. We weren’t quite ready to leave London and we were getting by as comfortably as possible with the work we had at the time. Bloc & Boon was never far from our thoughts and we always made sure we came back to it whenever we could. We have many napkin drawings from chats at the pub and spent a lot of time researching the avenues we could go down to financially back making things happen. We had no savings [cheers London + recession/cost of living crisis!] so this was paramount to deciding how to move forward.
Harry had been a full time carpenter/joiner for 10 years and at the time was working as a freelancer for a bespoke fitted furniture, cabinet and wardrobe company. Lu had been working for non-profit art galleries with her final job landing her an integral role with a team of 3 [at the time!] with a furniture company at the beginning of its own super exciting growth journey. This was an invaluable experience for both of us, with fab teams and exciting work - a lot of learning was done! It’s then that the stars aligned a bit. Harry was keen to work for himself and for Lu, after being forced to leave her job in the midst of facing what turned out to be a 15 month health struggle, we got a business loan, said goodbye to our London life and made the move back to Kent!
Since August 2023 we have been Bloc & Boon focussed, obsessed, blinkered - and the rest! Our range came together, we made as much as we could, we grew our workshop space and soaked up life outside the city. London will always be a very special place for us - but this was an altogether new start with a fresh quality of life and to build on our dreams!
We hope you love what we’ve created and can’t wait to evolve as a business.
For more take a visit to our shop.
If you’d like to reach out anytime just send a wave to hello@blocandboon.co.uk or head to the contact page.
