Chairs don’t grow on trees! Or do they?

Breaking conventions with a new approach to furniture!

Gavin Munro and the team at Full Grown are at the cutting edge of an innovation of form which highlights a new way to be closer to art and nature. Inspired by studying a bonsai tree which had formed into the shape of a chair in his childhood, Gavin has confronted conventional means of making furniture and instead chooses to grow it!

Nature is key

Having completed a Degree in Furniture Design Gavin began to work with natural materials in Scotland and California creating a number of elegant pieces from driftwood, using whatever the tide brought him to inspire his next piece. Taking pieces of wood and ‘stitching’ them together to make the structure of a table or a chair got Gavin thinking – could it be possible to grow trees directly into a beautiful piece of furniture? The answer is yes!

Old idea, new technique

Training and pruning young tree branches is not a new idea, in fact in the past Greeks, Egyptians and the Chinese have endeavoured to grow furniture this way. It is not a quick process with the trees taking between 4 and 9 years to grow into their fully formed shapes, but this is well worth it in the end producing fully functional and ergonomic furniture which lacks the environmental damage caused by more traditional methods.

Hard work, but worth it!

Gavin produces 50 or so pieces a year, however to produce this you need to grow 100 trees with 1,000 branches with produce 10,000 which need pruning and encouraging to grow in the shaped moulds. The trees are tended to by the means of as many natural, permaculture and organic methods as possible to ensure a happy and healthy crop.

The first pieces – Willow pendant lamps and mirror frames will be available to buy from Spring 2016 and will come with a Certificate of Provenance. You can learn more at the Full Grown website.

What do you think about growing furniture? Let us know on our Facebook page.