Hongkongers in queue for Briton's grow-your-own furniture
Furniture designer graduates from making items with driftwood to training, pruning and coppicing live trees to grow into the shapes of chairs, tables and other items
Deep in the English countryside, there's a bizarre sight: rows of trees being grown into upside-down chairs, slowly taking shape over years of careful nurturing. Patient Hongkongers are among the first to have placed pre-orders for these unique items of furniture, which won't be ready for another few years.
About 150 armchairs, 100 lampshades and various mirror frames are being grown out of the ground in a highly unusual adventure in furniture design.
The brainchild of Gavin Munro, his Full Grown company has produced some early prototypes, with each item one solid, jointless piece of wood. "It's a bit like a vineyard. You've got a few years to get everything up and growing," he says.
And it is not simply a case of planting and leaving them to it. There's plenty of give and take between Munro and his charges. "They don't grow into chairs on their own. At the same time, you can't force them to do anything they don't want to do otherwise they die back," he says.
