They've grown chairs, a coffee table, a garden gate. That's right, this Australian couple, the Pooktre Tree Shapers, molds growing trees into living furnishings...
Pooktre Tree Shapers started with Peter. Once a jewelry maker, he moved out into the country in his late 20's and planted an orchard. Through working with the orchard's trees, he one day simply thought to himself, “I wonder if I can grow a chair”. From that thought grew Pooktre, who shapes trees into furnishings and stick-figure-like sculptures of the human form.
Our favorite is the Living Chair in the first and fourth photos up top. The chair was planted ten years ago and we're in love with its cantilevered shape that's reminiscent (albeit in a very different language) of Mies van der Rohe's Brno Chair!
The couple now grows five pieces per year. They offer the service of helping others grown pieces in their own gardens and will work collaboratively with clients to grow commissioned pieces. Pooktre's creations are unique, that's for sure, and extreme expressions of outdoor living.
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no! leave the trees alone! plant amnesty!
looks like tree abuse to me.
those are flipping awesome, wish i had the skill and patience (let alone a tree or four) to do that.
soooo coooool
Wow. These are amazing! Quite the opposite of the "get it now, get it cheap" mentality. I can't imagine the patience, forsight, and planning this takes...not to mention the fact that these pieces are durrable, totally "green" and just plain awesome. I can imagine some forest elf sitting in these...
"looks like tree abuse to me."
No worse than pruning - or picking flowers & fruit.
(Think about it)
IMO - This is pretty cool.
i am so impressed. go look at the site... the tree people?? amazing.
so unusual, love it!
I want one of those tree houses show cased a couple of weeks back.....and this furniture as a patio. It's incredible and beautiful.
Living in the mountains, I have seen all kinds of homemade furniture made from dead branches and limbs of trees but this takes the cake. This is one of the most ingenius and amazing ideas I have seen in a long time. I would love to have one of these in my yard.
Look up circus trees. Amazing stuff.
love it...
Amazing!
Tree abuse? Seriously? I think this is amazing!
It's basically a form of topiary, isn't it? If anyone here hasn't seen "Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control," I highly, highly recommend it. These are amazing, and I've just looked up "circus trees" per the suggestion, and holy crap!
The most sustainable furniture ever, its still living, absorbing carbon and growing, love it. But the patience to do this - ayayayaya!!!
Formally, it's called "Arborsculpture"
There are at least a couple of books available on the subject, and one of these days I'm going to get around to getting one, because I find this endlessly fascinating.
i think it is tree abuse but only the chair. the tree is forced to grow in a bent form and not a curved form. there should be more arc rather than corners. the rest of the images seem fine for me. just make the chair more organic form rather than replicating a normal chair with organic material.
These trees don't look abused to me.
On the contrary, they look doted upon!
Hi this is Becky from Pooktre.
In relpy to uppergeorgetowner, kristykreem and Mr. Programmer about tree abuse.
Regarding your concern for the trees, we start with a seedling and guide the new growth of the tree, not bend already formed branches. This results in the even and balanced growth. Our way of shaping is a very gentle, but time consuming.
Some people try to do it quickly with older trees and this is when they run into problems. If you bend a branch of a tree this is when the damage accrues and leads to unpredictable results. Which is easily seen because it results in uneven growth and die back.
The problems seem to arise once you go beyond the sapling’s normal flexing range
Happy growing
Hi this is Becky from Pooktre.
In relpy to splatgirl about Formally, it's called "Arborsculpture"
This is incorrect.
Arborsculpture does not represent the art form as a whole. It relates to a tree shaping method of Richard Reames.
At Wikipedia there was a consensus that a neutral name was needed for the artform, and Tree shaping was decided upon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_shaping
Also the couple of books you mention on the subject of Arborsculpture are written by Richard Reames who created the word Arborsulpture.
You may be also interested in visiting this website http://www.treeshapers.net which shows photos from all the different tree shapers from around the world.
how is this tree abuse?! we cut up forests to make tables and shelves and chairs! and what about firewood? this tree abuse thing is ridiculous.
i think this tree shaping is amazing and inspirational! beautiful, creative, and functional!
AMAZING!!!
this is simply amazing i enjoyed watching these pictures. Very inspirational and unique concept in growing shaped natural furniture from live trees.
Jeanne
What a beautiful art!
Very cool, but the human-looking trees are scaring the crap out of me!
Guaranteed to be one of AT's top posts this month -- the novelty factor is off the scale. Great work Regina!
This is awesome!
That looks like one happy hippie.
I feel sorry for that tree!
I'm pretty sure trees can't feel and therefore they are not bothered by this in the least!
If that chair-tree thought it was being abused, don't you think it would gobble up the next sitter? LOL!!!!
AAAAAGGGGGHHHHH! Those people trees are the trees of my nightmares!!!!
(But they're wicked-cool!)
KrapArtist, you might enjoy this moveihttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Otik. I love topiary. Current project is cutting out large patches of sweeet gum saplings taking over everything and I did wonder about weaving some together.
you people that are dissing this are completely retarded this is amazing
if i knew how to do this i would
he's not harming the tree in anyway the thing is still growing
this is an amazing art and think about bonsais this is the same kind of thing
your just manipulating the way the tree grows
very cool!
This is awesome beyond belief ... if I could have one of these growing in my NYC apartment, I would!
Arborculture is a generic term that does not refer to specific style or method. The word was originally coined by Richards Reames but is now used all over the world as a generic term to describe tree shaping by various methods. A Wikipedia article called "arborculture" was changed to "tree shaping" largely through Beckey Northey's efforts. Indisputable evidence that "arborsculpture" is a generic term can be found on the "talk page" of the Wikipedia article on "tree shaping."
Here’s the full story as I understand it
Becky Northey has ambitiously chased the word “arborsculpture” all over the web in order to misinform people that the word has not fallen into general usage.
The word “arborsculpture” was coined by Richard Reames about 15 years ago. He never capitalized it, called it “the arborsculpture method”, or did anything similar to imply that it is a term for his method. The world needed a word for the sort of 3-D pleaching done by Erlandson and others, so Reames made up a useful term that easily gives a sense of what it refers to.
Over time, it became a popular term. Numerous published articles refer to the work of Axel Erlandson and others as “arborsculpture.” Some of these are in notable publications such as Popular Science and Science Frontiers, or are related to the relevant departments at respected universities.
Archive's on the talk page of Wikipedia’s “tree shaping” article documents dozens of occurrences of “arborsculpture” as a generic term. If the person who invented the term, and the world at large, consider a term to be generic, there is no logical reason why 1 or 2 people should be able to override that and tell us it is not.
I haven’t seen any evidence that Reames has exerted improper influence in promoting the use of this word. Like any author and lecturer interested in income, he does self-promote, but I haven’t seen evidence that he does so in a way that should provoke criticism.
Becky Northey considers Reames’ methods inferior to her own, apparently because they can involve the bending of relatively hardened wood versus the bending of the younger, softer wood she prefers.
Therefore, I conclude, that Northey’s obsession with suppressing the widely-used term “arborsculpture” is driven by her professional rivalry with Reames.
After manipulating the Wikipedia article “tree shaping” to serve this agenda (despite policies against editing articles when a conflict of interest exists), Northey left posts on numerous internet forums referring people to the Wikipedia article as supposed proof of her assertions.
Northey’s has even managed to get well-meaning Wikipedians to avoid the word “arborsculpture” on the grounds it’s “controversial. It’s amazing (and sad) the influence one single person with skewed thought processes and a mania for advancing them can accomplish. On the surface, there’s no harm in avoiding the word “arborsculpture” just to keep Northey happy. But Wikipedia is supposed to be objective resource. Instead, it has become part of Northey’s greater effort across numerous internet forums, comment boards, etc.
In the comments above, someone referred to Northey’s efforts as cyberstalking. This caused someone else to say very correctly “Commenting on one blog is hardly cyber stalking, it’s voicing an opinion.” Becky Northey, however, has made countless of posts as part of a systematic effort to assert that “arborsculpture” is the name for what she considers an inferior method of tree shaping. I would deem that cyberstalking.
If you don’t believe me, Google “Northey arborsculpture” and wade through the results. As for evidence of arborsculpture as a generic term used by numerous authors, search the net yourself or see the proof already gathered in Archive #4 of the talk page of the “tree shaping” article on Wikipedia.
Why someone should go to such great efforts to create the impression that “arborsculpture” isn’t a generic term does puzzle me a little. My best guess is that it is driven by her animosity towards Reames and a belief that people using the term benefits Reames in some enormous way. From what I can see, it doesn’t. It looks like Reames only lectures a few times a year, and he doesn’t sell a ton of books either.
But if Reames can derive a little prestige, and perhaps some beer money, from having coined a useful word, why begrudge him that? Whether people say “the Pooktre method of tree shaping” or the “the Pooktre methods of arborsculpture” doesn’t affect Northey’s livelihood. She should therefore stop harassing Reames and channel that energy into the positive goals of refining her own methods, implementing them, and sharing them with the world.