At the beginning of the 20th century, a Wisconsin banker grew tired of people praising the furniture he made from wood. His response was such a promise. absurd as ambitious: I would one day grow a chair stronger than any made by human hands. It took eleven years to achieve it.
Now a couple from the United Kingdom has taken over.
An idea born in front of a bonsai. When Gavin Munro He was a child who spent long periods in hospitals due to scoliosis and Klippel-Feil syndrome, he found refuge observing the trees from the window. Among them were several bonsai trees from his parents and one especially caught his attention because its silhouette reminded him of a throne.
It was in a wonderful report Washington Post that seemingly trivial image remained etched in his memory for decades. What began as a childhood fantasy turned into a creative obsession: if it was possible to shape a tree to look like a chair, why not try to grow it directly into a chair?
Rethink what it means to manufacture from the roots. Years later, while studying furniture design, that old idea came back stronger. The trigger was an academic exercise in which he analyzed the life cycle of a simple soda can and became aware of the enormous amount of resources, energy and industrial processes necessary to manufacture everyday objects.
That reflection led him to question also traditional furniture production. He found it paradoxical to wait decades for a tree to grow and then cut it down, fragment it and reassemble it in the shape of a chair. He then began to wonder if it would be possible to eliminate much of that process by letting nature do much of the work.
The birth of the Chair Orchard. In 2006, together with Alice Munro, a horticultural specialist and later his wife, he began an adventure that seemed as extravagant as it was impractical. The two set up an experimental field in Derbyshire which they named as Chair Orchardthe garden of chairs.
The first few years were full of mistakes, location changes, sunlight problems and even cows that destroyed young trees. However, far from giving up, they continued to perfect a method that combined design, gardening and centuries-old agricultural techniques to guide the growth of trees into predetermined shapes.
How to grow a living chair. The process appears to be extraordinarily slow. It all starts with a young tree that spends several years developing its roots. The trunk is then cut to stimulate new shoots that are carefully guided around structures designed to form the silhouette of an inverted chair.
The Munros prune branches, graft shoots together and make small interventions that guide growth. As the years go by, the different parts of the tree they end up merging naturally until creating a single solid structure. When the piece is ready, it is cut, dried for about a year and polished to obtain the final result.
20 years of work for a few pieces. The slowness of the process explains why, after almost two decades of experimentation, the results are still limited. Many promising pieces grew unexpectedly just before being harvested. Some species responded better than others and numerous designs had to be discarded.
Even so, the couple managed to produce functional prototypesas well as tables, benches, lamps and other experimental structures. Each piece represents years of patience and observation, something radically opposed to the rhythms of contemporary industrial production.
When nature stops being raw material. Over time, the Munros discovered that success depended less on controlling the tree and more to collaborate with him. Instead of forcing impossible shapes, they learned to respect their natural growth patterns and adapt their designs to the responses of each species.
The small wrinkles and marks that appear on some pieces are not considered defects, but rather the visible testimony of that collaboration between designer and tree. His philosophy, they countconsists of intervening as little as possible to obtain durable objects without breaking the biological logic of the plant.
Chairs that are worth as works of art. Although many of the pieces can technically be used as furniture, they are currently sold primarily as artistic works. Some have been exhibited in museums and galleries from Europe, Asia and the United States, and one of them is part of the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Prices start about $87,000 and several have already found buyers among collectors and institutions. Paradoxically, the creators themselves do not have any at home because they fear that their dog will destroy it.
A vision that is still beginning. The most striking thing is that Gavin Munro does not consider that he has achieved his goal. After twenty years, he believes he is only at the beginning of the journey. Their ambition is not only to sell exclusive pieces, but in teaching the technique to other people through future Full Grown Academy and extend the concept of furniture gardens.
The idea that was born when a child observed a bonsai from a hospital room has ended up generating trees shaped like chairs valued at tens of thousands of dollars. But for its creators, the real project is not the current chairs, but rather demonstrating that perhaps one day communities will be able to grow some of their own objects instead of manufacturing them.
Image | Full Grown
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