They grow chairs from living trees. Six are ready to sit.

Alice and Gavin Munro have spent 20 years growing chairs straight out of the ground in Derbyshire, England, pruning young tree branches over metal frames until they fuse into the shape of a seat. Each chair takes six to nine years to grow, then dries for a year before it can hold a person. The couple have worked with willow, apple, oak and hawthorn through their business, Full Grown. Gavin first had the idea as a child in hospital, recovering from operations on his spine and watching the woodland from his bed. His parents kept overgrown bonsai, and the silhouette, he thought, looked like a throne. "It's like bonsai meets 3D printing," he said. The chairs sell as artworks worth around 75,000 pounds. Out of a few hundred started, the Munros expect roughly a dozen to survive 20 years of labor. Six are currently sittable. The rest are still making up their minds.