Balancing Act: Talking Proportions with Barny Lee

May , 2025

For Impressions of Spring, we wanted to collaborate with someone who shares our love for craftsmanship and longevity, a passion for the stories that design can tell. Meet Barny Lee, fine furniture maker, former model, and longstanding friend of SIRPLUS. After a sunny day spent roaming West Sussex and exploring his workshop, we sat down with Barny to chat about balance, proportion, and the perils of perfectionism.

It was a rare offer, Barny admits, to let us shoot inside his Sussex studio. Warmed by a cheerful wood burner, with doors flung open to greet the sudden April sun, the studio sits on the outskirts of his brother-in-law's vineyard, a cluster of buildings where a gentle hum of productivity soundtracks our conversation. "I spend eighty percent of my working day by myself in the workshop, thinking, making, and talking to myself, so it’s almost like a physical embodiment of the inside of my mind." What does a day in the workshop look like? "A fly on the wall would think I was a madman,” he laughs, “I chat away and sing whilst I'm trying to work out proportions of a new design or something. You sort of have to feel it instead of actually ‘working it out,’ so the background noise I create for myself weirdly helps me focus, it blocks out other distractions.”

Working out these proportions and their feel is at the heart of Barny's process. "It's literal!" he exclaims, "how does the top of a table balance?" There's a precarity to that question, he acknowledges, amused, "it makes it sound like my furniture is teetering." Perhaps then, it is a visual balance, not to be taken literally? Barny gestures around him, "heavy kitchen tops to a light table, the darkness of a curtain to the lightness of a floor." The desire for balance and proportion is sought within the pieces of wood he crafts from. It is the shape, and the story it tells, the reassuring impression of balance from perfectly defined proportions, that are at the heart of each piece. "The shape itself needs to feel exciting, even if it doesn’t obviously look it" Barny explains, pointing to his own outfit: "It's like a white tee shirt. It’s just a white tee shirt, but the cut of it has to feel good."

Balance, for Barny, extends outside of the workshop; "it’s between the sculptural and the functional, between the contemporary and the traditional." But it also motivates him more broadly. "Everything's a compromise," he smiles, “between what you design and what is physically possible to make”. But this is no bad thing — compromise is freeing for his design, liberating him from perfectionism. "Obviously I want a creation to feel perfect, but compromise is a great force for creativity… The handing over of control, whilst also doing everything in your power to create something good with what’s in front of you,” Control and perfectionism instead, he suggests, are antithetical to creativity — “a good lesson for design and an even better one for people.”

Balance creeps into Barny's spatial considerations, guiding his relationship between city and countryside — he’s never wanted a workshop in the city. He shows us around, describing his differing moods between urban and country landscapes. "I also just like the aesthetic of a rusty old workshop," he confides, a modest admission amidst the beautiful studio; "I drink in the design of the city, but I'm so fond of muddy work boots and the rain, getting the fire going and just making things." London, however, for Barny, will always be a treasure trove of inspiration, from the formidable brutalism of the Barbican to the steadfast charm of the “normcore” London pubs.

What else gives him inspiration? The process itself can heavily encourage his creativity. "I think I try to disguise that" he laughs, acknowledging that how the process looks is important to the work itself. “Even if no one else gets to see it, the aesthetic of the process and how it makes me feel inspires the end product — It’s like dancing better because you’re wearing a great outfit.” Barney laughs, and considers, “I’m sure there’s a vanity in there somewhere but I would hope it’s more just an all-round feeling of expression.”

It is this creativity that continues to inspire each piece until it is complete. "I love suggestions of live edges, where the grain of the plank nibbles in", he says, gesturing to a nearby table: "it's not crazy rustic, it's controlled, but it gives you the sense that these are really big pieces of wood." "Wow!" he exclaims, displaying his joy and care for the materials of each work. The sculptor Isamu Noguchi provides fertile ground for inspiration, as does Zaha Hadid. Delicate spindles of legs greet generous, wide tabletops, with grooves impressed into the smooth wood. Looking to the abstract, but with a grounding in the classical is again all about balance: "I feel that you earn the ability to become abstract — you make the classical intricate pieces, then you earn your right to the abstract".

Clothes, too, he notes, can adopt the same complex patterns, like a wide trouser paired with a narrow shirt, or a three-quarter-length trouser styled with an impractically oversized cuff. "Maybe impossible to use your hands," he grins, "but it could look fantastic."

Was it William Morris who once said that a home should be filled only with things we believe to be beautiful or useful? The idea of function, or utility, is important to Barny. Pieces become uniforms, transcending trends, when its utility is proven beyond the aesthetic. It's the moment where a creation becomes more than a trend: "it's when it's actually out of fashion, it becomes interesting." He loves this waiting game, the anticipation of the moment where people start to love an object because it's simply good. "I mean I would like to say, like any creative, that I'm not remotely affected by trends" — he jokes — "I am!" Even when a trend is momentary, it can still provide roots for an idea, tendrils of inspiration, "they bounce off a blank canvas." Trends “refine an overwhelming amount of choice” — Barny likes, for example, “when there's only one vanilla ice cream to choose from at the supermarket."

Blank canvases, white tee shirts and vanilla ice cream? "I love staples!" he enthuses, "I love looking at fashion, but I don't necessarily follow it. There's no rhyme or reason; I just need proportions that make me feel good." A similarly intuitive approach informs Barny's craftsmanship: "to some extent you're always led by the wood itself, it moves in a certain way." Barny designs first, later searching for the perfect timber. A "nice process," he lets the shapes in his mind translate onto the wood he chooses. Any favourites? Sycamore is preferred; British and relatively fast growing, sustainable, pliable and beautiful.

Sycamore trees have a lifespan of centuries. Is that another source of inspiration? He’d love his tables to be there at the end of the world, a joke that nevertheless betrays his serious approach to design. "I want to wear the same pieces of clothes forever — I get real pleasure out of something being really good when it's old." Again, the timelessness of utility, the permanence of the perfect shape, wins out. "I want to design things that are accessible, and simple. That's the best, and often most difficult, design." It may be sentimental, Barny admits, "but I love tables.” The good and the bad happens at the table, with stories embedded into the grain itself (he once ran his hand over the table the gunpowder plot was formed around); for Barny, it's an honour to place a table into someone's home, knowing "how many people will gather around it, how long it will be around for".

What else does Barny want to see last, to hand down to future generations? He recalls how his love of craftsmanship and woodwork was passed to him: "Dad's an amazing carpenter." So while Barny would love to hand this knowledge down, along with some key objects — a handmade desk, the cashmere coat, now moth eaten, bought with his first modelling paycheque — “people are always infinitely more important than things.” Having spent the day in the company of Barney in his workshop, we couldn’t agree more.