Houses Australia — Issue 118 2017

STUDIO

LEE BROOM

• FURNITURE & PRODUCT DESIGN •

G

iven UK furniture, lighting and product

designer Lee Broom’s success – with

showrooms in London and New

York – it’s difficult to credit that his

eponymous company was only founded

in 2007. This year he’s celebrating its first

decade, notably with a Queen’s Award for

Enterprise (International Trade, 2015),

and heralding its future aspirations.

Since he acted in his youth and later

studied Fashion Design Womenswear at

Central Saint Martins in London, Lee’s Milan

International Furniture Fair and London

Design Festival installations are imaginatively

themed and dramatically staged. Their titles

add a narrative element to each collection,

reflecting his admiration for Alexander

McQueen’s and John Galliano’s fashion

Celebrating his studio’s tenth

anniversary this year, UK-based Lee

Broom has already made a significant

mark on the international design scene.

Words by Colin Martin

shows. Lee is also a pragmatist. Recognizing

delegates’ difficulty in visiting Milan’s many

venues, for his 2016 installation he created

the Salone del Automobile, a truck filled

with his designs, which toured throughout

the city. His Time Machine installation

in April 2017, in a derelict railway vault,

comprised a white-light-emitting carousel

showcasing some of his seventy-five

products. “It was an opportunity to highlight

past designs before archiving some of them,”

he says.

Lee spends more time looking at design,

particularly architecture, than reading design

history, and draws on his own strong visual

memory when sketching. He cites the New-

York-based mid-twentieth-century furniture

designers Paul Evans and Karl Springer as

inspirations. Of paramount importance to

realizing his designs in three dimensions

is working alongside skilled craftspeople,

stimulating them to work beyond the

traditionally perceived limitations of their

media. A fine example is Lee’s cylindrical

Tube light, milled in Carrara, Tuscany from

single pieces of local marble to merely six

millimetres thick, beyond which the stone

invariably fractures. A strip of LED bulbs

within each marble cylinder produces what

seems to be a warmly glowing, solid piece

of stone. Each lamp is unique due to the

natural variations in marble.

Lee also collaborates with manufacturers.

In February 2017 Wedgwood released the

result of a four-year collaboration with Lee.

Inspired by a black-and-white Wedgwood

Panther Vase (1774), he worked with

traditional craftspeople on four striking,

silhouetted shapes, enlivening their black-

and-white decoration with silver finials,

copper or gold spheres, or glazed ceramic

spheres or plinths. The star of the Time

Machine show was Lee’s latest design, an

austerely beautiful white Carrara marble

grandfather clock. “In designing it, I

thought of the clocks presented to retirees,

denoting time well spent,” Lee says. His

company’s first decade was well spent,

promising great things for the future.

leebroom.com

01 03 04

02

01 Lee Broom with the Time

Machine clock, released

as part of his tenth

anniversary celebrations.

02 Tube lights are milled

from single pieces

of Carrara marble so

delicately that the LED

strip lights make them

appear to be a glowing

piece of stone.

03 The Mini Crescent

Chandelier seamlessly

combines solid and

opaque elements.

04 Lee Broom collaborated

with Wedgwood to

create a series of vases,

inspired by a striking

black and white Panther

Vase (1774). Photograph:

Michael Bodiam.