Suzanne's Mom's Blog

Photo: Chris Webb.
Husband and wife Gavin and Alice Munro have been turning trees into furniture since 2006 in Derbyshire, England. Each chair takes six to 12 years too make.

Visiting my grandfather in Beverly Farms, Massachusetts, when I was a kid, I found so many aspects of his place magical. One was a bench in the woods that had been created by tying a plank of wood between two saplings and giving it time.

Naturally, I thought about that when I read today’s story by Sydney Page at the Washington Post. It’s about a couple who created an unusual job for themselves when they began to create unusual chairs.

“When Gavin Munro was about 7 years old,” Page reports, “he looked at his parents’ overgrown bonsai trees and noticed that the silhouette of one looked like a throne. The image stayed with him.

“At the time, Munro was spending long stretches in the hospital being treated for scoliosis and Klippel-Feil syndrome, a rare bone disorder. He passed the time by watching the trees and wildlife outside his window. Nature, he said, helped him heal.

“ ‘The first seeds were sown when I was a little boy,’ said Munro, who has spent the past 20 years trying to grow trees into chairs.

“Since 2006, Munro and his wife, Alice Munro, have been shaping young trees into furniture on a field in Derbyshire, England, that they refer to as the Chair Orchard.

“The process takes six to 12 years per chair — depending on the species and weather — and so far, they have produced about 15 prototypes.

“For me, it’s about sustainability and watching the amazing wildlife developing in the orchard,” Alice said.

“Some of the chairs are usable as furniture, but for now they are sold as works of art, and are priced beginning around $87,000. The Munros hope to ramp up production, and they have led workshops at schools and design programs in the hope of teaching others their technique.

“Gavin, who is a furniture designer by trade, and Alice, who has a background in horticulture, run
Full Grown, a company the employs specialized ancient techniques — including coppicing, grafting, pleaching and espalier — to shape living trees into chairs. …

“Before he began experimenting, Gavin said he read about others who had grown furniture from trees, including John Krubsack, a banker from Wisconsin who created a chair in a similar fashion, and Axel Erlandson, who made sculptures and furniture by grafting branches and trees together. …

“In 2006, the Munros took over a shady, windy corner of a friend’s farm in Derbyshire to start testing. They quickly realized that the trees didn’t get sufficient sunlight, so they leveled the hillside into flat rows and replanted — only to have cows trample over the trees. …

“The experiments then moved to Alice’s late mother’s garden, where their first chairs were produced. In 2008, the Munros planted some 3,000 trees on a rented field that became the Chair Orchard. Over the years, they’ve experimented with several tree species, including willow, oak, ash, hazel, beech and cherry.

“The process begins with a single sapling, left to establish its roots and grow for about five years. The Munros then coppice the tree — cutting it down to the stump — which encourages new shoots to grow from the roots. Those shoots are guided around a frame, shaping them gradually into the form of an upside-down chair.

“To coax the tree into the correct shape, the Munros prune unwanted branches and graft others — which involves binding shoots together so they slowly fuse into one. They also make small cuts in the bark to influence the direction of growth. Once the chair is ready to be harvested, it is dried indoors for a year and sanded. …

“It has been, the Munros said, a constant process of trial and error — which is why they have far fewer finished chairs than they had hoped at this point.

“ ‘The generation we thought was going to work actually grew out of shape when it got close to harvesting,’ Gavin said, adding that they have also produced lamps, tables, benches and structures.

“Along the way, they have learned to lean into nature.

“ ‘We’re trying to ask as little as possible from the trees and offer as much protection,’ Gavin said.

“ ‘The better you treat the tree, the more it’s going to work with you,’ said his wife. ‘The more we’ve worked with nature rather than trying to control nature, the more successful we’ve been.’ “

Lots more at the Post, here. Fascinating photos.