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<\/a>The third and final seed of the project sprouted twenty years later on a beach in San Fransisco \u2013 after Art College, a Degree in Furniture Design, an apprenticeship to a cabinet-maker and a long stint building with natural materials in Scotland and California \u2013 Gavin had a period of making driftwood furniture. It was a sheer delight to see what new materials each tide would bring, then a matter of stitching the wood back together \u2013 each \u2018stitch\u2019 fitting into carefully cut-out mortices. This was the moment Gavin realised that we could grow trees directly into beautiful and useful shapes.<\/p>\nA: In essence its an incredibly simple art. You start by training and pruning young tree branches as they grow over specially made formers. At certain points we then graft them together so that the object grows in to one solid piece \u2013 I\u2019m interested in the way that this is like an organic 3D printing that uses air, soil and sunshine as its source materials. After it\u2019s grown into the shape we want, we continue to care for and nurture the tree, while it thickens and matures, before harvesting it in the Winter and then letting it season and dry. It\u2019s then a matter of planing and finishing to show off the wood and grain inside.<\/p>\n The whole process takes place over seasons and years \u2013 between 4 and 8 years to grow a chair \u2013 but when you look at how long and how much effort it takes us now to go from having no tree to the final wooden object, then you realise that the craft we\u2019re a part of developing is not just more cooperative with the natural world; it has an elegant efficiency all of it own.<\/p>\n A: Yes, It\u2019s been going on for millennia. Apparently, the ancient Greeks & Egyptians grew stools and the Chinese dug holes and filled them with chair-shaped rocks and grew tree roots through the gaps.<\/p>\n A: The biggest challenges are twofold. The first challenge is the practical fact that what we\u2019re doing is neatly organising a small forest. I\u2019m only making 50 or so pieces per year but for every 100 trees you grow there are a 1,000 branches you need to care for, and 10,000 shoots you have to prune at the right time. It\u2019s an art-form in itself keeping track of everything.<\/p>\n The second challenge is the emotional fact that, while there is the regular joy of seeing birds and beasties living our production rows, most of the tasks I do on an average day won\u2019t come to fruition until several years later. That\u2019s quite hard to live with \u2013 especially as it\u2019s taken 9 years already and we\u2019re still a year or two away from the first substantial harvest. Thankfully prototypes and early pieces are starting to come online but still, it\u2019s a hefty act of faith. It\u2019s certainly not instant gratification!<\/p>\n A: They\u2019re still growing now, but when harvested and finished we expect them to be not just fully functional and ergonomic but grown, grafted and fastened into one solid piece, ie. no joints that only ever loosen over time. These could last for centuries. We hope and trust that this will eventually become an improvement on current methods.<\/p>\n A: We learnt early on that an unhappy tree won\u2019t do what you want, just because you want it to. It will send off a shoot in the direction it wants to grow (usually towards the light), or sprout a shoot just below the carefully-positioned graft. As a species, humans have been grafting and coppicing (not to mention topiary, pollarding and espalier) trees for thousands of years, and this developing craft is taking advantage of some of that ancient knowledge, as well as the renewable fuels of sun, water, soil and air. When we finally cut down the furniture pieces from the trees, they will sprout new shoots (coppicing) and continue to have a life, possibly to grow something else later. We nourish and nurture the trees, employing as many natural, permaculture and organic methods as we can, as optimum nutrition means optimum growth.<\/p>\n We think this method is kinder and less wasteful than planting a (frequently monocultural with all those implications for biodiversity) plantation of trees, growing for a specified lifetime, then chopping down, leaving an uncared-for, cleared area, with all the additional problems like desertification.<\/p>\n A: The (recycled) plastic moulds (same amount of corrugated light plastic used in about two \u2018For Sale\u2019 signs for a chair mould) were a prototype design. We\u2019ve been reusing them as far as possible, and now we\u2019re moving on to different formers, moulds and ways of constructing the grown chairs and furniture. Please be assured we aren\u2019t pouring oil down the drain to produce this furniture!<\/p>\n A: We are talking with a number of galleries at the moment and we\u2019ll announce details closer to the time.<\/p>\n The first chairs are expected mid-2017. For the other pieces we\u2019ll find out whats ready at the end of this growing season \u2013 the geometric pendant lamps and mirrors frames are currently expected for release late Spring 2016.<\/p>\n We have a very limited of pieces left for pre-order and can be reached at fullgrown.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>Q: How are these Grown Furniture pieces made?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/a>Q: Has this been done before?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/a>Q: What are the biggest challenges in making them?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/a>Q: Are the pieces fully functional and ergonomic?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/a>Q: <\/em>Isn<\/em>\u2019t this cruel to the trees? <\/em><\/p>\n<\/a>Q: If this is so \u2018<\/em>Green<\/em>\u2019, why have you got plastic moulds? Isn\u2019t that a waste of valuable oil?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/a>It\u2019s estimated, from early calculations, that we use about 25% of the energy needed to produce a wooden chair with conventional means. As the items take some time to grow, we are currently looking at designs & methods we have developed further, and things are constantly changing in this fledgling production method.<\/p>\n<\/a>Q: When and where will they be for sale?<\/em><\/p>\n