(24 May 2016) LEAD IN:
Money may not grow on trees, but for one UK designer, furniture certainly does.
Gavin Munro's farm contains hundreds of surreal chair-shaped trees that are trained into a specific shape.
The only drawback - each piece of furniture takes six years to grow.
STORY-LINE:
Deep inside rural Derbyshire, this could be any farmer's field. But a closer look reveals some strangely shaped plants.
This is 'interior' design on the 'outside'. Trees here are grown into the shape of furniture and are carefully pruned and trained to form chairs.
Gavin Munro is the man behind the project and the founder of Full Grown.
"It takes a while sometimes for it to really sink in, what it is that we're actually doing. Most people kind of go, 'What, you're growing chairs..?' How does that work? But because in essence it's so simple, you can see it in people's faces as they kind of go, 'Oh, ok', " he says.
When it rains it's not just chairs that get watered. He's also growing a range of mirrors, lamps and tables.
"Basically what this is is a kind of organic 3D printing. It's almost exactly the same. We're going up in layers - except it's a little bit slower and we're using air, water and sunshine as our machines and fuel," he explains.
The trees need constant attention - regardless of the weather.
It's a complex process to ensure the tree grows in the right shape so the end product doesn't require any glue, nails or other man-made fixtures to hold an item together.
"So this is a standard lamp and this is another thing that's grown upside down and is going to turn around so these are actually the legs and what we're doing here is just checking that there's no little side shoots coming out that will cause problems later and looking on the top here that all the grafts that we wanted are all ok and don't need any attention. And then this guy will be free to grow this year and thicken up so these legs here will be so thick. And then we'll be able to turn the whole thing upside down and have a bulb in the middle here," Munro says.
It can take between 5 to 10 years to grow a fully functioning chair. And as this business only started in 2012, there are few finished products.
A small selection is on display here, in Little Morton Hall in the neighbouring county of Cheshire.
The glowing lightbulbs emphasise the natural texture, shape and colour of the lampshades. Each product displaying its own unique form.
Back in rainy Derbyshire, Gavin's in the workshop examining one of his earlier trials.
"This here is our prototype. This is the first chair that we did. And this is where we did it from four trees joined into one. But it's also where we learnt that that's not necessarily the right idea and that it might in fact be easier to grow one tree into the bottom and spreading it out so you go from one to two to four legs and it's more like the shape a tree can cope with."
Full production has yet to start. When it does, individual pieces are expected to go for several thousand pounds each.
While this business may be new, the concept of growing furniture isn't.
Roger Bateman, is a specialist in furniture design at the Sheffield Hallam University
After years of trial an error, Gavin and his team are confident the furniture harvested from this field can grow into a flourishing business.
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