Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} How to Grow a Chair The Art of Trunk by How To Grow A Chair: An Interview with Richard Reames. Using ancient techniques and a few basic tools, Richard Reames shapes living into furniture and sculpture near his home in Oregon for clients worldwide. He is the author of two self-published books, How to Grow a Chair: The Art of Tree Trunk Topiary with Barbara Delbol, and Arborsculpture: Solutions for a Small Planet, published in June. His work was on display this summer at the World Expo in Aichi, Japan. Joshua Foer spoke to Reames in July 2005 by telephone. richard reames: arborsculpture. ‘I coined the word arborsculpture in 1995 because no single word had been used to recognize this unique art form. a branch of topiary with the potential to savethe environment. there are other words and terms that are used to describe this art. , permaculture, tree trunk topiary, botanical art, botanical architecture, biotechture, living art, visionary art, and really weird. the difference between my work and that of other topiary artists is that I work with the inside of a tree, from the trunk while most other are formed from the outside. I love being outside all day, I like experimenting, and I feel that I am perpetuating a remarkable art, one that might some day flourish and produce the most environmentally sensitive houses you could imagine.’ – richard reames. Growing Furniture. Train and graft a tree for half a dozen years or so and you have strong, local, one piece (tree) furniture. One piece chairs, no joints. Partially planed. The first chairs are expected to be in galleries mid-2017. by FullGrown, UK. One piece tree chair. The trees are harvested in winter and then allowed to dry before planing. The farm is currently growing furniture in willow, ash, oak and sycamore. FullGrown, Derbyshire, UK. These chairs are grown upside down and the exposed cut trunk (up top) reveals the age of the chair. FullGrown, UK. Gavin Munro uses ancient techniques combined with modern technology to grow, graft, prune and nurture living trees into furniture. The trees are trained to grow over specially made forms, and at certain points they are grafted together so that the chair grows into one solid piece. FullGrown, UK. Gavin a tree table. FullGrown, UK. Amazing one piece tree table. FullGrown, UK. One of the first tree lights. Tree lights growing around molds on the farm. Some lamps and mirror frames will be ready spring of 2016. Tree on form. Good picture showing how back legs are being grafted. The will be reused for subsequent chairs. FullGrown, Derbyshire, UK. This is how Gavin first grew his chairs. Starting with four willow , one as each leg. He later changed it so that one stem as the source of the whole chair. Their first chair was made from Willow (Salix Viminalis). See a video about Gavin’s work here: inspirationgreen.com/growing-chairs FullGrown, UK. Chair of pear wood from a production orchard. Years of pruning created this shape. For sale, Wolfheze, Netherlands. onthout.nl. Tree Stool grown Dr Cattle gives lessons on stool growing. Dr Christopher Cattle. Upside down willow chair. Branches growing from a willow trunk formed into legs. Trunk was cut and then legs bound and chair inverted. By Dutch designer Floris Wubben. Chair Farm by Warner Aisslinger, Berlin. Willow grown in a steel frame in an agricultural lab. aisslinger.de. I would imagine the wooden seat will eventually crack. Found on pinterest, no source. How to Grow a Chair: An Interview with Richard Reames. Using ancient grafting techniques and a few basic tools, Richard Reames shapes living trees into furniture and sculpture near his ho​me in Oregon for clients worldwide. He is the author of two self-published books, How to Grow a Chair: The Art of Tree Trunk Topiary with Barbara Delbol, and Arborsculpture: Solutions for a Small Planet , published in June. His work was on display this summer at the World Expo in Aichi, Japan. Joshua Foer spoke to Reames in July 2005 by telephone. Joshua Foer: How does arborsculpture differ from bonsai or topiary? Richard Reames: Arborsculpture is the art of shaping tree trunks to create art and functional items through bending, grafting, pruning, and multiple planting. Bonsai is the art of miniaturizing trees. Some of bonsas basic techniques, such as bending branches and pruning, are similar to arborsculpture. Topiary was originally defined as ornamental gardening, so you could say, to be technical, that arborsculpture is a branch of topiary, but the word topiary is more commonly used to describe the shaping of foliage. In that sense, topiary is almost the opposite of arborsculpture in that you’re only trimming the foliage, whereas in arborsculpture, you’re only working with the trunk. Of the various tree arts, arborsculpture is most closely related to , a technique that began in France as a way to grow quality fruit in small areas, like inside castle courtyards. They’d grow fruit trees up against the wall and shape the branches so that they were evenly spaced and parallel, maximizing the amount of fresh air to each piece of fruit. I like to say that arborsculpture is like espalier on acid. Tell me about some of the arborsculptures you’ve grown. I have grown many chairs and benches. I have a 30-foot spiral poplar tree that goes up 8 feet, splits into two trunks that spiral around each other, and then is grafted back together at about 16 feet high. I have a nice spiral staircase growing right now in oak. I planted a circle of birch trees years ago and just recently spun them all clockwise a few feet and grafted the tops together. It’s a small gazebo. Can you walk me through how you’d grow a chair? For a chair, I select perhaps a dozen flexible, long, unbranched saplings and I them in a pattern. I can then bend them along a frame into the shape of a chair or a bench and do the initial grafting. The majority of the work can be done all at once. The frame holds the trees for a few years until the tree casts that form through its growth. It’s just a matter of the trees getting older and growing together with some gentle pruning to keep them growing in the right direction. You’re also trying to grow a boat. That’s a collaboration with a friend. We planted two very long ash trees that arch up at the ends. They form the bottom of the boat. Then we planted rib trees so that the planking can be fastened on. That project is intended to be harvested once it’s thick enough. At first we projected it would take five years, but I’m guessing it’ll be more like eight. While the boat may be functional, much of what you grow is purely sculptural. What are the aesthetic criteria by which an arborsculpture is judged? I think balance is the number one criterion. Learning how to create symmetrical growth is the key to creating a good arborsculpture. Say you’re going to use four trees; if you can get them to grow at the same rate, then you have even balance. To achieve even growth, you either have to limit the fast-growing trees or speed up the slower-growing ones. Also critical is the way the grafts heal. That’s where the true mystery and power of this art lies. Given that arborsculpture requires only the most primitive tools, it seems like it should have been invented a long time ago. Why wasn’t it? That’s a question I often wonder about. Perhaps the Druids were great tree-shapers, but since wood doesn’t preserve well, the evidence may have rotted long ago. Even though arborsculpture didn’t have a name until I coined the term in 1995, there are historical examples of tree-shaping. The oldest evidence we have is a five-by-seven inch illumination from 1516 by Jean Perréal, titled Nature Objects to the Alchemist’s Errors . In the painting, an angel is sitting in an elaborately shaped, grafted tree. She has folded arms and is chastising the alchemist, who does not look pleased. Perréal’s illumination accompanied a new version of Roman de la Rose , an allegory of chivalric love that is considered one of the greatest literary works of the thirteenth century. Tell me about some of the early practitioners of arborsculpture. In one of his books, Earths in the Universe , the Swedish mystic wrote about visiting another planet whose inhabitants dwelled in living trees. He talked about how they would shape these trees from a very young stage and guide their growth into temples. Later, a nineteenth-century Austrian mystic named Jakob Lorber wrote a book called The Household of God about the wisdom of planting trees in a circle. Once they had grown together, Lorber said, the ring of trees would be a much better house than anything anyone could build. Did Swedenborg or Lorber ever grow an arborsculpture? No, they didn’t. There were three modern pioneers of arborsculpture: John Krubsack, Arthur Wiechula, and . Krubsack was a prominent banker in the small town of Embarrass, Wisconsin, at the turn of the last century. He grew an extraordinary chair out of box elder that was shown at the 1915 World’s Fair. In 1926, Wiechula, a German agricultural engineer, published a radical little book called Developing Houses from Living Trees . Wiechula never successfully grew a living house, but he did grow a 394-foot-long wall structure using Canadian poplars to keep snowdrifts off a section of train tracks. But no other figure went so far in demonstrating the tree’s potential as Erlandson. In 1947, he created a roadside attraction in Scott’s Valley, , called the Tree Circus. It was advertised with a large sign that said simply, “SEE THE WORLD’S STRANGEST TREES HERE.” He shaped about seventy-five trees and invited the public in for a fee. He never was very successful on the business end of things, but his trees were stunning and unique. How did Erlandson get started? In nature, it’s not uncommon that two trees will lean up against each other and self-graft. It’s called an . Erlandson found one in a hedgerow on his farm. He realized he could do that intentionally and form any kind of structure he wished. Did Erlandson know about Krubsack and Wiechula? There’s no evidence that he did, but if the people back in the 1950s are anything like the people today, the first person who ever heard of Krubsack’s chair would have immediately told Erlandson. People like to share that kind of information. From what we know about Erlandson, if he did know about it, he wouldn’t have mentioned it to anyone else. He had a reputation for extreme secrecy. Being a showman, I think he was kind of attached to the idea that he was the only one who’d ever done this. Does that mean Erlandson never passed on his techniques? Yes, unfortunately what we found in his letters is that he lamented the idea that he hadn’t found an apprentice. As he got older, he knew that what he learned would die with him unless he found someone to pass his knowledge on to. Did you ever meet Erlandson? I was about eight years old when Erlandson died, but I do remember visiting the Tree Circus once when I was a kid. So how did you decide to become an arborsculptor? In 1984, there was a tussle over whether the Tree Circus should be declared a historic landmark. The trees were scheduled to be bulldozed and the property was going to be sold. The media descended on the Tree Circus and a number of articles were published about it. Michael Bonfante, the owner of a large California grocery store chain, arrived on the scene and bought the remaining trees and moved twenty-eight of them, at great expense, to a new theme park, which he called Bonfante Gardens. Eight years later, I was facing fatherhood and working as a landscaper. I posed the question to myself, “What is the best possible career for me that would be good for my family and would be good for the earth?” When I got clear on the question, then the answer was right there flashing in my brain. It came to me as the pictures I had seen of Erlandson’s trees in those articles about the Tree Circus from 1984. After I wrote my first book, I discovered about a dozen of us around the world and it seems that we all started around the same time period, right around the late 1980s or early 1990s, as if the idea were available through the ether. I found two people in Germany, two in England, and a couple in Australia, Israel, and Thailand. Now there’s a new fellow in China. Most of them had never heard of Erlandson. They just started thinking, “Wouldn’t it be neat if I could shape these trees?” Everyone came to it in a different way. You’re trying to grow a living house. Tell me a bit about that. I believe that if enough people put their minds to using living trees, we can learn to grow houses. I believe that if we put our minds to it, like going to the moon, there’s no reason we couldn’t all be living in houses where the walls and ceilings are composed of living tree material and there are leaves coming out of the roof. We could accomplish this in one generation. We’d build doorways and windows that the trees would grow around, and also plumbing and electrical conduits. The trees would just swallow all the pipes. We’re going to call this “arbortecture.” What kind of progress has been made? I’ve planted six structures that will eventually be habitable. At this point, they’re considered garden gazebos. I have a young one growing on my place now, but the trees are only about four feet tall at this point. Though it’s never been done, I’m guessing it’ll take another decade to complete. But we could learn to do it faster. If the parts were grown in a nursery as stock, you could theoretically grow whole panels. If we could do that, the suburbs could become forests again. Is anyone else trying this? In Germany, there’re two people who are seriously undertaking it, following the lead of Wiechula. Konstantin Kirsch and Herman Block have planted several different houses in different species. Kirsch has the most mature example. He planted 1,300 three-year-old bare- ash saplings, seven per foot, and wove them together to form an interior court surrounded by five rooms and a bathroom. The trees have all been grafted together crosswise and the walls are really taking shape. Could you have multi-story living houses? Depending on the kinds of trees that are used, the sky is the limit. Imagine using redwood trees. Every fifteen or twenty years, you could add another story. You could incorporate some kind of metal flooring that supported the floors between the tree trunks. Or you could even use living branches to create the floors. Why is it better to make a house out of living trees than dead trees? My personal desire is to teach ways in which we can live in harmony with trees instead of just going out and cutting them down and building what we want. We can grow them into what we want and they can stay alive and still give us all of the ecological advantages of living trees. For example, living trees hold the soil. They sequester carbon dioxide from the air and give off oxygen. They provide food. They provide places for wildlife and nature to exist. They help stabilize the climate and mitigate global warming. What’s the most extraordinary arborsculpture you’ve grown? If I had to pick one, it would probably be the peace sign tree. It’s remarkable because the tree itself gave me the idea. I saw how the branching was going and I shaped it from there. I found a tree, in a nursery, which had been topped off at about six feet. It had five branches coming out from where it had been cut. I took the two outside branches and brought them together into a circle. I connected one branch that was going straight up to the top of the circle. By simply grafting the branches together and tying them, all pieces remained alive and continued to get thicker, creating the peace sign. What will happen to the sculptures as the trees grow? There are two angles of approach here: growing for harvest and growing for longevity. When I grow a tree to be harvested, I cut it when it reaches its ultimate thickness. For unharvested trees, the amount of negative space in the design determines the how long it takes for the branches to meld together and swallow the design. Trees are in transit, just like we are. They simply add annual rings every year and grow from their tips. They don’t push out of the ground. They’re actually very predictable, once you learn how they grow. They’re mellow kinetic sculptures. It’s a medium that embraces time, that forces you to think about what the tree was like when it was younger, and what will it be like when it gets older. People realize the value in an art project that requires years to take its ultimate shape. Richard Reames is an itinerant sculptor and the author of two books on the subject of arborsculpture, How to Grow a Chair and Arborsculpture —Solutions for a Small Planet , self-published in 1995 and 2005, respectively. Reames recently coordinated a display of the world’s arborsculpture at the World Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan, and his own tree work has appeared in numerous publications, including Starr Ockenga’s Eden on their Mind and Paul Copper’s . For more information or to purchase his books visit www.arborsmith.com. Joshua Foer is a freelance science writer and contributor to Slate , Discover , and the Nation . He lives in Washington, DC. The Artful Science of . Ansel Oommen describes how the ancient practice of shaping trees is resurging, providing inspiration for chairs, to whole houses. Dating as far back as the 16th century, tree shaping has been hinted at in paintings and literature but it was not until the advent of Axel Erlandson, the father of modern tree training, that the art form truly flourished. As a young man, Erlandson was inspired by the sight of two conjoined branches in a hedgerow on his property. As a result, he began experimenting, designing and training over 70 different trees into various stunning horticultural and architectural specimens. He then went on to open a roadside exhibition in Scotts Valley, California in 1947, debuting his curiosities in an aptly named ‘Tree Circus’. What Erlandson had observed and used to great effect, was a natural form of grafting known as inosculation. Rather ordinary, the phenomenon occurs when trunks, roots or branches in close proximity gradually fuse together; it can arise within a single tree or neighboring trees of same or different species. Over time, as the limbs grow, they exert pressure similar to the friction between two palms rubbed against each other. This causes the outer bark to slough off, exposing the inner tissue or cambium and allows the vasculature of both trees to intermingle; in essence, joining their lifeblood. Besides grafting, tree shaping also employs pruning, bending, weaving and bracing to create the dramatic loops, twists and knots evocative of the form. Many of the techniques are borrowed from related horticultural practices such as bonsai, espalier and topiary. The potential of tree shaping for eco-solutions is promising but much of it still remains dependent on the trial and error projects of a few pioneers. Three Main Methods. There are three main methods to achieving a shaped tree. Aeroponic culture, Instant tree shaping (Arborsculpture) and Gradual tree shaping. Aeroponic culture grows the roots of the tree in a nutrient mist until they reach a length approximately 2-6 meters at which time the roots are shaped as they are planted. Instant tree shaping (Arborsculpture) is the practice of using mature trees or whips approximately 2-3 m long, which are then bent into the desired design and held until cast with the next 3-4 years growth of the tree. Gradual tree shaping starts by creating the framing to support the growing seedlings and then planting 7- 30 cm tall seedlings or cuttings. The new growth is trained along the design pathways for the next couple of years. Then the trees just grow thicker with time. Most species of trees are suitable for tree shaping but n ot all species are suitable for the creative treatment of the Arborsculpture method , however. Trees to be bent into shape must be flexible, vigorous and easily grafted (thin barks); notable examples being willow, sycamore, poplar, birch and Persian ironwood. The movement is so recent in fact, that the term Arborsculpture itself was coined only in 1995 by Richard Reames and Barbara Delbol in their book, How to Grow a Chair – the Art of Tree Trunk Topiary . This book gives detailed instructions of the Arborsculpture instant method of bending up a chair and peace sign in an afternoon. L iving furniture is a popular application; so too is the prospect of living houses and landscape architecture. The ability of growing trees to incorporate foreign material such as metal and glass further solidifies tree shaping as a viable green alternative for use in urban design. One exceptional instance of this type of urban tree shaping lies in Germany. There, architect Ferdinand Ludwig’s Baubotanik, or Living Plant Constructions, showcases the brilliance of botanical engineering at its best. Among his creations are a three-storey willow tower, an osier willow footbridge, and a silver willow bird watching station. The Plane-Tree-Cube Nagold, a building that incorporates live sycamores, is accessible to the public. Hopefully, future plans of a banyan fig-inspired living air will be too. Ludwig explains, “I came in touch with some historic examples of living architecture while I was a student and was immediately fascinated. The vision is a new way of integrating trees in architectural and urban design.” Ludwig’s vision has paid off, attracting attention at Archiprix International, a competition that judges projects in urban design and landscape architecture. His work has also won awards for ‘Deutschland, Land der Ideen’ (Germany: Land of Ideas) and ‘Übermorgenmacher’ (Creating the Day after Tomorrow). Unlike their dead lumber-based counterparts, living architecture continues to combat soil erosion while providing oxygen, sustenance, shelter and habitation. An integral part of the ecosystem, trees can convert carbon into biomass, mitigating the effects of climate change. Even when harvested (essentially killing them), living architecture persists as a source of aesthetic wonder. When asked how he was able to shape trees, the late Axel Erlandson often replied, “I talk to them”. Indeed, when humanity and nature work together, the results can be mutually impressive. Rather than cutting down trees, tree shaping seeks to cultivate a natural passion for the future of our world and our environment. Ansel Oommen is an environmentalist, avid gardener and urban forager in New York City. A former student of the Institute of Children’s Literature, he has just finished writing his first book, The Oak Tree , and is searching for a publisher. You can find out more from Absel at: www.behance.net/Ansel. Further resources. For more information on the three main methods of tree shaping see the work of Swati Balgi (September 2009), "Live Art" , Society Interiors Magazine (Prabhadevi, Mumbai: Magna Publishing and the book Three Methods of Tree Shaping every aspiring tree shaper should be aware of , Peter Cook and Becky Northey, SharBrin Publishing Ptd Ltd. ISBN 978-1-921571-41-1. You can also view a FREE eBook version of The 3 Methods of Tree Shaping. For more information about Ferdinand Ludwig visit: www.ferdinandludwig.com. We'd love you to SUBSCRIBE to Permaculture, or download a FREE sample issue and try before you buy. Also available as a digital subscription (for just £10) and Apple and Android devices.