How to Grow a Chair

July 28, 2006 3:57 PM

How To Grow A Chair: An Interview with Richard Reames. Arborsculpture is the art of shaping tree trunks to create art and functional items through bending, grafting, pruning, and multiple planting.
posted by team lowkey (10 comments total)

previously,previously,via.
posted by team lowkey at 3:57 PM on July 28, 2006

Aw, I thought he'd be the guy that came up with this.
posted by mathowie at 4:18 PM on July 28, 2006

Wow. And I thought that this guy's stuff was cool. Well, ok, it is. But this growing stuff has the advantage of taking much longer.
posted by gurple at 4:23 PM on July 28, 2006

That lawn chair is pretty cool, but not nearly as cool as a tree chair.
posted by team lowkey at 4:25 PM on July 28, 2006

huh, these look cool. I wonder if they're bouncy feeling like a kids playground
posted by Heatwole at 4:34 PM on July 28, 2006

Oh, that grass armchair is wonderful!

Sprout a couch.

Treehouse. Banyon rooms. Moss chair. Moss armchair.

Earthen manor house. Root furniture.
posted by nickyskye at 4:54 PM on July 28, 2006

It's interesting, you'd think you'd get much stronger wooden furniture with this technique, since there are no joins to consider. But some shapes might be difficult, I guess.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 4:57 PM on July 28, 2006

When I was a kid, the house across the street, and several other houses and vacant lots in town, had horse trees, oak trees which had been trained so that at a height of about five feet they turned horizontal for about five feet and then turned back vertical creating a horse back on which to sit. We were told that Indians had done this as trail markers, but now that I am older it is clear that the dates don't really work out for that theory. My grandfather who owned the land on which the town was later built probably did it but no one in the family knows.
posted by caddis at 5:59 PM on July 28, 2006

Also see this previously.
posted by iconomy at 6:16 PM on July 28, 2006

Cathedral (nearly 20 years in the making).
posted by kika at 6:37 AM on July 29, 2006