Kate Hume

The glassware creator and interiors guru on embracing the unexpected, her love of handmade objects and the art of making your home your own.

- Fiona McCarthy

British-born, Amsterdam-based Kate Hume came to the interiors world via high fashion – living and working in both London and New York as a soughtafter stylist for luxury emporiums Browns and Bergdorf Goodman. She forged an international reputation in the design world for her glassware and furniture collections before turning her hand to interiors, setting up her own studio in 1998. Since then, she has designed residences from London to Moscow, including apartments in the recently finished Herzog & de Meuron-designed Elbphilharmonie building in Hamburg. Here, she shares her design secrets…

How did you start out? 

I first worked in fashion, for the legendary Mrs B [Joan Burstein] at Browns in London and then as a stylist for Bergdorf Goodman in New York. It’s where I met my Dutch husband Frans van der Heijden, an advertising photographer – together, we collaborated on ad campaigns and films. Just after we moved to Amsterdam in the late Nineties, I started designing sculptural hand-blown glass vessels and, along with Frans, our Heijden-Hume furniture collection, including dining tables, benches, bookshelves, desks and room dividers, in finishes such as walnut, wenge, oak and ash. 

When was your big interiors break? 

In 2001, I met a Dutch lady at a dinner in Russia – I’d gone to do a recce on a glass-blowing company there – who contacted me a year later to ask if I wanted to redo the interiors of her house. I’d wanted to change from film and fashion to design – it’s why we created the glass and furniture collections – and suddenly, here was this ‘fairy godmother’ I’d hoped to find. 

What signifies your style?