May 18, 2026
Leaf it to the chair experts
'We mould trees to grow into the shape of chairs'
These living chairs took 10 years to grow — and the internet is split between awe and tree puns
TLDR: Alice and Gavin Munro are growing full chairs from living trees, a slow process that takes up to 10 years per piece. Commenters were torn between calling it beautiful, showing off old references, and joking that this means ordinary woodworking is officially finished.
A Derbyshire couple have spent 20 years figuring out how to literally grow trees into chairs, and yes, the internet immediately turned this into a mix of admiration, niche history lessons, and one glorious declaration that "carpentry is dead". Alice and Gavin Munro shape young trees over recycled plastic frames, prune and graft the branches together, then dry the finished piece for a year. The result is a one-piece chair grown straight from the orchard — basically furniture with the world’s slowest delivery time.
But the real action is in the reactions. One camp is fully enchanted, calling the pieces beautiful and treating the whole thing like eco-art from a fairy tale. Another group jumped in with the classic online move: actually, this has a name. Commenters were quick to point out that this is called tree shaping, and some even dug up references from the 1980s and older Hacker News threads to prove this idea has deep roots. Yes, the comments became a mini detective story.
And then came the joke that stole the show: "Carpentry is dead." It’s the kind of dramatic one-liner that perfectly captures the mood — half amazed, half amused, and fully aware that waiting a decade for a chair is either visionary craftsmanship or the funniest possible attack on IKEA culture. Either way, the crowd seems fascinated by the patience, the weird beauty, and the sheer audacity of farming furniture.
Key Points
- •Alice and Gavin Munro have spent about 20 years developing a process to grow trees into furniture shapes such as chairs.
- •Each chair is grown upside down in an orchard, usually takes six to nine years to form, and is then dried for one year.
- •The method uses training, pruning and grafting of young branches over specially made recycled plastic formers so the item grows as one solid piece.
- •Gavin Munro said the idea grew from a childhood observation, his later furniture-making experience in California, and years of patience developed during treatment for Klippel-Feil syndrome.
- •The couple founded Full Grown in Derbyshire in 2006, began their first generation of chairs and lamps in 2012, and currently have a few dozen pieces growing, with plans for a teaching programme called Full Grown Academy.