Living Furniture Orchard Produces First Harvest After 20-Year Process
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A couple in Derbyshire, England, has harvested its first functional chairs from a unique 'furniture orchard' where trees are sculpted over years to grow into furniture shapes. The pieces, sold as artworks, can be valued at tens of thousands of dollars. The creators are now establishing an academy to teach their techniques.
Facts First
- Full Grown harvests its first functional chairs after a 20-year process of sculpting living trees.
- Each chair takes 6 to 9 years to grow and is dried for a year after harvesting.
- The furniture is sold as art, with gallery owner Sarah Myerscough stating a chair can be worth nearly $100,000.
- The creators are establishing the Full Grown Academy to teach their unique cultivation skills.
- A bronze cast of a chair was featured at the Chelsea Flower Show this month.
What Happened
Alice and Gavin Munro began their business, Full Grown, on a rented two-acre farm in Derbyshire in 2006. The process involves pruning young branches of trees like willow, oak, and ash over metal frames to guide them into furniture shapes. After being chopped, each item is dried for one year. The couple has refined their technique, transitioning from growing chairs upright to upside down and replacing plastic molds with metal frames. Gallery owner Sarah Myerscough stated that the chairs can be worth approximately £75,000 (nearly $100,000). A bronze cast of one of their chairs was featured at the Chelsea Flower Show in the UK this month.
Why this Matters to You
This development represents a novel intersection of art, design, and sustainable agriculture. It may inspire new approaches to material sourcing and craftsmanship, potentially influencing furniture design and ecological art practices. For collectors and art enthusiasts, it offers a unique, living-art investment opportunity.
What's Next
The couple is establishing the Full Grown Academy to teach these cultivation skills. Gavin Munro stated that out of the few hundred projects they started, they expect to have only a dozen new chairs after 20 years of labor, indicating a slow but continued production cycle. There are currently six functional chairs in existence, with a handful more growing and drying in the workshop.