Philips Bijou Desk Lamp

Philips Bijou desk lamp brass tripod base conical tube green mushroom lampshade 1960s 1970s E27 socket

Philips Bijou desk lamp top view green mushroom lampshade round hole silver tipped bulb 1960s 1970s

Philips Bijou desk lamp inside view white painted mushroom lampshade E27 socket 1960s 1970s

Philips Bijou desk lamp brass E27 socket metal ring lampshade holder silver tipped light bulb 1960s 1970s

Philips Bijou desk lamp gilded brass tripod base conical tube 1960s 1970s

Philips Bijou Desk Lamp – 1960s Catalogue Picture

For the student: Junior
Very decorative: Bjiou
A little fantasy: Decora
For the businessman: Senior

Philips Bijou Desk Lamp – The original box

Philips Bijou desk lamp – Evoluon

The Evoluon building in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, Louis Kalff design.

Lamps In The Movies

Sœur Sourire (2009)

A Philips Bijou desk lamp was used as a prop in the 2009 Belgian-French biographical drama film Sœur Sourire (Sister Smile). Starring Cécile de France, Sandrine Blancke and Jan Decleir.

Saving Mr. Banks (2013)

A Philips Bijou desk lamp was used as a prop in the 2013 American period drama film Saving Mr. Banks. Starring Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks and Paul Giamatti.

Et Si On Vivait Tous Ensemble (2010)

A Minou desk lamp, a variation on the Bijou, was used as a prop in the French comedy film Et Si On Vivait Tous Ensemble (All Together) from 2010, with Jane Fonda, Geraldine Chaplin, Pierre Richard and Daniel Brühl.

Chez Bompa Lawijt (1994 – 1996) TV Series

A Philips Bijou desk lamp was used as a prop in the 1994 – 1996 Flemish comedy television seriesChez Bompa Lawijt (At Grandpa Noise). Starring Bernard Verheyden, Denise Zimmerman and Martin Gyselinck.

Many thanks to David for the Saving Mr. Banks film photo.
Many Thanks to Koen for the Chez Bompa Laweit TV series photo. You can find his Instagram account over here.
Many thanks to Storm from Storm Vintage for the help.

Materials: Brass tripod base. Dark green metallic painted conical plastic rod, metal rod inside. Brass ornamental concave ring. Dark green metallic painted lamp socket holder. Silver painted lampshade holder with 3 rods. Dark green metallic painted aluminium mushroom lampshade with a hole in the middle, painted white on the inside. Bakelite or metal E27 socket.

Height: 31 cm / 12.20”

Width: ∅ 28,5 cm / 11.22”

Electricity: 1 bulb E27, 1 x 100 watt maximum, 110/220 volt.
Anytypeof light bulbcanbeused. But, preferably a silver cup/crown/bowl light bulb. However, a gold cup light bulb is just a bit more beautiful, also when not lit. Only for the table lamps with brass or gold coloured parts.

Period: 1960s, 1970s – Mid-Century Modern.

Designer: To be appraised.

Manufacturer: Philips, Eindhoven, The Netherlands.

Other versions: The first edition from the 1950s has slight differences in the lampshade and the base as you can see below. The Philips Bijou desk lamp comes in many colours and was made in some slight variations.

A similar table lamp with a brass rod in stead of the conical middle part is named Minou S, the later version is named Minou 69. You can find the Minou over here. The Minou was also sold by Boulanger.

Louis Christiaan Kalff (1897–1976)

Louis Kalff (Amsterdam, 14 November 1897 – Waalre, 16 September 1976) was the designer and art director who, more than anyone else, gave Philips a modern visual identity in the 1920s and 1930s. From 1925 onwards he worked at the Philips advertising department in Eindhoven, where he was asked to make the company’s advertising and presentation match the size and ambitions of the firm.

Philips house style and logo

When Kalff arrived, the name “Philips ” was written in many different ways. He standardised the lettering, the colours (he liked strong primary colours) and the overall layout of advertisements and packaging. In the second half of the 1920s he introduced the combination of waves and stars as symbols for radio transmission, first on packaging and later on products. In 1938 he brought the wordmark and the emblem together in the familiar Philips shield – one of his best-known contributions.

Besides the work for Philips he designed posters and graphic work for the Holland-America Line, Calvé, Zeebad Scheveningen, Holland Radio and others, always in the same clear, modern idiom.

Lighting and the LIBU (1929)

Because electric lighting in architecture was developing very fast, Kalff founded the Lichtadviesbureau (LIBU) in 1929. That bureau advised architects, municipalities and companies on how to use light in buildings, shops and public space. It did not only push Philips products, it also looked at what the market needed. Through the LIBU, Kalff organised the lighting for several world exhibitions, among them Barcelona, Antwerp and Paris.

From advertising to industrial design

After the Second World War the earlier “artistic propaganda” work inside Philips evolved into a broader industrial design service, later known as ARTO. Kalff was closely involved in this and for years he supervised the styling of radios, loudspeakers, domestic appliances and professional lighting installations. New products were often “kalfft ” first – checked for function, for looks and for recognisability as a Philips product.

Did he design the Philips lamps?

Many 1950s Philips lamps are offered today as “Louis Kalff ”. That sounds attractive, but it is not supported by Philips documentation. Kalfforganised the lighting and design departments (LIBU, later ARTO), he approved designs and he set the taste, but there is no primary source that attributes specific desk, table or other lamps to him personally. The similarity between his later architectural work (Evoluon) and some saucer-shaped Philips lamps, such as the Decora, Senior and Junior, simply shows that the same visual language was used inside Philips.

The story that he also designed lamps for German makers such as Cosack / Gecos is another internet repeat and has, as far as we know, no documentary basis.

Safer wording: “Philips lighting of the 1950s was developed within the design organisation created and led by Louis Kalff, but no individual lamp models can be firmly attributed to him.”

Architecture and later work

Next to graphic work Kalff also designed and co-designed buildings for Philips, such as the Dr. A.F. Philips Observatory in Eindhoven (1937) and houses for Philips directors. After his retirement in 1960 he remained active as advisor and architect. His best-known late project is the Evoluon in Eindhoven (opened 1966), designed with Leo de Bever, a futuristic disc-shaped building that perfectly fits the forward-looking image he had promoted at Philips for four decades.

Louis Kalff passed away in Waalre on 16 September 1976.

Koninklijke Philips N.V.

Inspired by the fast-growing electricity industry and by the promising results of Gerard Philips’ own experiments with reliable carbon filaments, his father, the Jewish banker Frederik Philips from Zaltbommel, financed the purchase of a small factory in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, on 15 May 1891.

The first years were difficult and the company was close to bankruptcy, but in 1895 Gerard’s younger brother Anton Philips joined the firm. With Anton’s commercial drive the family business expanded very quickly and the Philips brothers turned the lamp factory into the basis of what would become a major international electronics company.

To secure the supply of lamp parts, Philips very early started to make things in-house: its own machines, its own glass (from 1916) and even its own gas separation to fill lamps with argon, so it was less dependent on German suppliers during wartime. This strong vertical integration became typical for Philips and later also supported radio and medical products.

From the 1920s onward Philips did not only make lamps but also radios and even ran its own shortwave stations (PCJ and PHOHI) to promote them worldwide – an early mix of product and broadcasting.

In later sources the “first Philips shaver” is sometimes put in the early 1930s, but Philips itself dates the electric Philishave to 1939; in any case it shows how the company moved from lighting into small household and personal devices.

On 9 May 1940, the day before the German invasion, the Philips family left for the United States with a large part of the company’s capital. From there they continued operations as the North American Philips Company and kept control over the group during the war. After 1945 the headquarters returned to the Netherlands, again in Eindhoven.

After the war Philips became a broad technology group: radios, televisions, X-ray and medical equipment, and of course lighting, which remained one of its core businesses for decades. Only much later, in 2016, the lighting activities were split off and continued under the name Signify – all vintage Philips luminaires on this site belong to the period when lighting was still an integral part of Philips.

Today Philips is mainly a health-technology company. The roots are still in Eindhoven, but since 2025 the head office is in Amsterdam (Prinses Irenestraat 59).

Philips Bijou desk lamp – 1st Edition

The Bijou changed over the years, this is the first version from the 1950s, it has a more rounded lampshade and a different tripod base, you can find an article about it over here on Vintageinfo.

Philips Bijou desk lamp – 1960s Catalogue Picture

Bijou desk lamp together with the Diplomat, Romeo & Major desk lamps.

Lamps In The Movies

Nous Finirons Ensemble (2019)

A Philips Bijou desk lamp was used as a prop in the 2019 French comedy-drama film Nous Finirons Ensemble (We will finish together). This tragicomedy is the sequel to the Les Petits Mouchoirs (the small handkerchiefs) blockbuster from 2010. The English title of the film is Little White Lies. Starring François Cluzet, Marion Cotillard and Benoît Magimel.

Giri/Haji (2019)

An orange-red Philips Bijou desk lamp was used as a prop in the 2019 British TV series Giri/Haji (Duty/Shame). Starring: Takehiro Hira, Kelly Macdonald and Yōsuke Kubozuka.