Chair Harvest and Great Big Story – 4th October 2016

The 4th was a very good day for us here at Full Grown. We were joined by Chris from Great Big Story, a video network set up by the American news giant CNN, “dedicated to the untold, the overlooked and the flat-out amazing.”. As you can probably guess, that made us incredibly proud. Chris was a real treat: well traveled and incredibly knowledgable about the world, a fantastic interviewer and filmmaker, and somebody that Alice could speak German to!

But the real glory of the day was the reason for Chris coming all the way from Berlin – the harvest of our first single tree Full Grown Chair.
With a full seat, back, and strong legs, this First Generation Willow Dining Chair is the best example yet of what we are trying to achieve. It demonstrates clearly that this technique works, and we’ve even surprised ourselves with some of the detailing. Due to the fact that they are grown upside down, it has been hard to get a true view of the seat, but we were blown away with just how well the process has worked. Where the back joins the seat looks beautiful, the grafts have held sturdy, and, most importantly, the seat has kept to the desired plane. Or, in other words, it’s actually flat! And, as we are leaving it’s brothers and sisters for another year to thicken, things can only get better and stronger. The row that this chair came from was started in 2012, and factoring in drying times, the chair should be planed and ready by the start of Summer 2017. That’s five years from start to finish, with no damage to our existing established forests. We’re calling that a success.

We’ll update you with a press release when the video comes out, but until that time, be sure to head over to Great Big Story for some fantastic videos.