An ingenious British designer has come up with the ultimate environmentally-friendly way to create stunning household furniture - by letting Mother Nature do all the hard work.

Gavin Munro grows young trees into specially-designed plastic moulds, pruning and guiding the branches into shape before grafting them together to form ultra-tough joints.

Using this method he’s already created several prototype pieces and has a field in Derbyshire where he’s currently tending a crop of 400 tables, chairs and lampshades which he hopes to harvest next year.

I have to admit, when I saw the headline I thought this was some kind of April Fool prank: How to grow your own furniture: Eco-friendly designer uses special moulds to guide branches into ready-made chairs, tables and lampshades

But I guess “botanical manufacturing” is real? The designer says:

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 - I’m interested in the way this is like a kind of organic 3D printing that uses air, soil and sunshine as its source material.

After it’s grown into the shape we want, we continue to care and nurture the tree as it thickens and matures before harvesting it in the Winter and then letting it season and dry.

More: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3033546/How-grow-furniture-Eco-friendly-designer-uses-special-moulds-guide-branches-ready-chairs-tables-lampshades.html#ixzz3XIkwv936

More on Curbed as well.

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