Furniture Orchard in England Grows Chairs
- 8 hours ago
- 1 min read
Inspired by the beauty of nature, geometry and the desire to work with wood, an English couple have spent the last 20 years studying and developing the techniques and craft of Tree Shaping and Botanical Craftsmanship.
Alice and Gavin Munro began creating the ‘furniture orchard’ on their two-acre farm in 2006, but the harvesting typically takes between 6-9 years per chair. The process involves pruning young tree branches as they grow over a special metal frame to form the shape. In fact, for practical reasons, the chairs are grown upside down.
Each item is dried for a year after being chopped, and are then sold to customers as artworks for very considerable sums. They are selling the chairs as artworks which are “priced accordingly” and London gallery owner Sarah Myerscough says they can be worth around £75,000 (nearly $100,000).
“Since we started we’ve used all sorts of different types of trees,” says Gavin, who calls his unique, organic enterprise Full Grown. “Primarily we’ve shown pieces from willow, but we’ve tried apple, cherry, oak, ash, beech and hawthorn.” Adding: “We’ve tried growing a few different items of furniture, but we’re focusing on chairs - and a bench design which seems considerably easier."
The couple are now also setting up the Full Grown Academy to pass down the skills in the hope that more people will carry on the process. Want to see more? Here's a 2 minute video of Gavin explaining what he gets up to...