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Full Grown is a UK company that grows trees into chairs, sculptures, lamps, mirror frames and tables. It was co-founded by Gavin Munro in 2005.
In 2005 with a £5,000 investment Gavin Munro started to experiment with willow to grow chairs. [1] The original idea came from Gavin's childhood memory of an overgrown bonsai that looked like a small throne. The inspiration lead to growing trees into chairs, sculptures, lamps, mirror frames and tables. [2]
The idea of growing trees for 50 years then cut them into small pieces glue together in ways that can only ever fall apart didn't seem to make much sense. Better to grow the trees into one solid piece. [2] [3] For example, a chair or a light shade. Ideally the tree would have the ability to re-shoot and in this way yield furniture the way an apple tree in an orchard does. [4]
Working together with his wife Alice Munro. The concept is to train young trees to grow over plastic molds until maturity. Thereby creating no wood waste. This process can take up to eight years to mature. [5]
2006 Full Grown started planting trees to grow furniture. On a 2.5 acre field around 3,000 trees have been planted with production getting underway in late 2011. [6] [7]
The first prototype, The Vaila Chair, was revealed in a TEDx talk in Derby in 2014.
Gavin Munro was born in Matlock England. [4] He studied furniture design. He created driftwood furniture while in San Francisco. [3] Munro's mother in-law allowed the first prototypes of chairs to be grown in her garden. He co-founded Full Grown and is the managing director. [1] [8]
In a two-acre field north of Derby Full Grown is currently tending 400 trees. They are only making 50 or so pieces a year. [3] The first batch was to be harvested in 2015 [1] [3] [9] [10] Bulk of the pre-orders are from outside the UK most in France and the US with some orders from London, Hong Kong, Germany and Spain. [10] Thou they will need to have patience as the grown chairs may take as long as 10 years before they are harvested dried and finished. [11]
Full Grown are using permaculture ideas to help with pest control and tending the field. [1]
The chairs are based on 18th century "Shaker" with some mid-century Scandinavian design centering around the idea the function is intrinsic to usefulness. [9] The chairs are grown upside down. [7]
The trees are trained along pre-defined routes following a blue plastic mold. The growing tip is shaped and held in place with small plastic clasps. [2] The trees are gently manipulated to create the exact shape of chairs, tables, mirror frames or lamps. You can't force the trees as a tortured branch dies back and will reshoot elsewhere. The shaping can be inch-by-inch over the span of a few years. [12] One tree has been planted specifically to grow each piece. Some of the pieces use grafting as part of the design. [2] This process of growing the piece take somewhere between 4–8 years. [13] [14] During this time a piece thickens and matures before being harvested in the winter. Over several months the pieces are dried and seasoned. They are planed, cleaned back and polished to show the wood grain. [3] [11]
Gavin Munro’s company Full Grown uses the following species of trees: They mainly use willow as it grows fast and is relatively easy to work with. They like the idea of offering other varieties such as cherry, oak and Gavins personal choice of ash. Partly to give a range of choice for customers and also to spread the risk of disease. Ash is very prone to fungal disease and die back." [1] [11]
To grow a finished chair takes about four to five years with willow. It can take nine or more years to grow a chair in oak. [10] [12]
Furniture refers to objects intended to support various human activities such as seating, eating (tables), storing items, working, and sleeping. Furniture is also used to hold objects at a convenient height for work, or to store things. Furniture can be a product of design and can be considered a form of decorative art. In addition to furniture's functional role, it can serve a symbolic or religious purpose. It can be made from a vast multitude of materials, including metal, plastic, and wood. Furniture can be made using a variety of woodworking joints which often reflects the local culture.
Erotic furniture, also known as sex furniture, is any form of furniture that is designed to act as an aid to sexual activity. This includes furniture and harnesses designed to aid positioning, assisting with comfort, penetration level and stimulation. Other types of erotic furniture are constructed to be an aid to erotic bondage. The functionality may be obvious or the erotic furniture may be designed to appear as conventional furniture. Some conventional items of furniture such as the four-poster bed and the chaise longue traditionally have erotic associations, but they are not considered to be erotic furniture as their primary use is not erotic. Erotic furniture can also be furniture decorated with erotic art.
Garden design is the art and process of designing and creating plans for layout and planting of gardens and landscapes. Garden design may be done by the garden owner themselves, or by professionals of varying levels of experience and expertise. Most professional garden designers have some training in horticulture and the principles of design. Some are also landscape architects, a more formal level of training that usually requires an advanced degree and often a state license. Amateur gardeners may also attain a high level of experience from extensive hours working in their own gardens, through casual study, serious study in Master gardener programs, or by joining gardening clubs.
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Tree shaping uses living trees and other woody plants as the medium to create structures and art. There are a few different methods used by the various artists to shape their trees, which share a common heritage with other artistic horticultural and agricultural practices, such as pleaching, bonsai, espalier, and topiary, and employing some similar techniques. Most artists use grafting to deliberately induce the inosculation of living trunks, branches, and roots, into artistic designs or functional structures.
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"Today industrial design is functionally motivated and follows the same principles as modern architecture: machine-like simplicity, smoothness of surface, avoidance of ornament ... It is perhaps the most fundamental contrast between the two periods of design that in 1900 the Decorative Arts possessed ..."
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Living sculpture is any type of sculpture that is created with living, growing grasses, vines, plants or trees. It can be functional and/or ornamental. There are several different types of living sculpture techniques, including topiary, sod works, tree shaping and mowing and crop art. Most living sculpture technique requires horticultural skills, such as grafting or pruning, to create the art.
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Richard C. Reames is an American artist, arborsculptor, nurseryman, writer, and public speaker. He lives and works in Williams, Oregon.
Ancient furniture was made from many different materials, including reeds, wood, stone, metals, straws, and ivory. It could also be decorated in many different ways. Sometimes furniture would be covered with upholstery, upholstery being padding, springs, webbing, and leather. Features which would mark the top of furniture, called finials, were common. To decorate furniture, contrasting pieces would be inserted into depressions in the furniture. This practice is called inlaying.
The Confidant from Casa Batlló, also known as the Double Sofa or Banc de dues places , is a furniture piece designed by Antoni Gaudí. Originally designed for the dining room of Casa Batlló on Barcelona's Passeig de Gràcia, the chair is currently exhibited in the Modern Art collection of the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya and at Gaudí House Museum in Barcelona. Replicas are displayed at the Gaudí-designed Casa Batlló and Casa Milà.
Christopher Cattle is a British furniture designer who has developed a process of growing furniture by shaping living trees. Cattle calls his work GrownUp Furniture but it is also known as Grown Furniture.
Furniture created in the Art Nouveau style was prominent from the beginning of the 1890s to the beginning of the First World War in 1914. It characteristically used forms based on nature, such as vines, flowers and water lilies, and featured curving and undulating lines, sometimes known as the whiplash line, both in the form and the decoration. Other common characteristics were asymmetry and polychromy, achieved by inlaying different colored woods.
There are various methods of tree shaping. There are strengths and weaknesses to each method as well commendable tree species for each process. Some of these processes are still experimental, whereas others are still in the research stage. These methods use a variety of horticultural and arboricultural techniques to achieve an intended design. Chairs, tables, living spaces and art may be shaped from growing trees. Some techniques used are unique to a particular practice, whereas other techniques are common to all, though the implementation may be for different reasons. These methods usually start with an idea of the intended outcome. Some practitioners start with detailed drawings or designs. Other artists start with what the tree already has. Each method has various levels of involvement from the tree shaper.
