Pooktre – Living Furniture

Pooktre chair

I just discovered this recent form of eco art. It’s not exactly a living wall, but it’s definitely unique. Pooktre is the art of gradually shaping trees to serve as sculptures or even furniture over long periods of time.

Becky and Peter from Australia (pooktre.com) have grown furniture, tree people and even jewelry directly out of trees. Becky said a necklace can be grown from a seedling in about a year, but some of the larger eco sculptures have taken 8-10 years to create. They don’t actually fertilize or even water unless it’s particularly dry – the just let nature run it’s course while guiding the trees into the shapes they want. The tree species that they used the most are wild plum (Prunus myrobalan) and Black Cheery (Prunus Serotina).

Some of the trees they leave alive in the ground while others are harvested to make very unique furniture and other eye-catching items. Their work is popular as well. In the 2005 world expo, 8 of their pieces went to Japan to be shown.

From an interview Becky had:

Most people seem to think tree shaping takes too long. That’s not how it should be viewed, rather think of it like this: the time you spend shaping a tree is captured by the tree, then amplified. Twenty, thirty, fifty or maybe a few hundred years from now people will be able it see a tree shaping that you did today. Whether or not you chose to shape a tree, the time passes.

Here’s an example of their work from creating a coffee table and mirror to be harvested as furniture. The trees were carefully sculpted as they grew over 5-8 years. The mirror used some of the plant roots to act as a stand.

Coffee Table

Pooktre

Pooktre Mirror

Gradual Tree Shaping Completed

Here’s Becky and the necklace she made out of a sapling. A Topaz was grafted into the the necklace as a pendant. It took a year to grow and another six months to dry out enough to take the bark off. Once that was done, she oiled it and now you see the finished product.

Jewelry

They’ve also crafted some interesting garden figures.. who are.. in a sense.. alive. It’d spice Halloween up for sure.

Garden Figures

Pooktre Garden Figures

Garden Figures

Chris from Grown Up Furniture grows stools from trees.. and only stools. Chris’ goal is to get as many people as possible growing furniture (which really is the ultimate version of sustainable production). He calls it ‘grownup’ furniture as it’s the result of mature thinking. The stool was featured in 2009 in the ‘Salon Habitat Jardin’ held in one of the prestigious department stores in Lausanne.

Grown Up Furniture Stool

Plants have the ability to be joined together through grafting and arborsculpture relies heavily on this. Woody plants are also able (with some persuasion) to retain a shape they have been forced to assume when they grown new layers of wood over the original soft bark. The difference between arborsculpture and Pooktre is arborsculpture is quickly forming trees into shapes while Pooktre involves growing them into shapes gradually.

(Update: Richard Reams from www.arborsmith.com informed me via email that he coined the term arborsculpture before Pooktre and that it involves growing plants into objects using all methods – both slow and fast. I had previously been informed by Becky from www.pooktre.com that pooktre is the art of gradually growing trees into objects and is not the same as arborsculpture. Both creators are very interested in having the work defined correctly and have differing opinions. I’d recommend visiting both sites and emailing the authors if you want further clarification.)

Below is a willow chair that was made with arborsculpture.

Willow Chair

Here’s a tree house/hut made from Ficus in the Bio Park on Okinawa island:

Ficus tree house - arborsmith.com

Tree Trunk Topiaries from Belgium create trees with ornamental trunks. Before they sell the plants, they’ve already spend years in their nursery as the nurture them from cuttings to the final product. They create the shape of the tree during the early growth stages. Even in the same species, their experts pay attention to the location of the branches to ensure each plant looks its best. These trees you could definitely see being used by landscape designers and architects. I’m a fan of the helix and the corkscrew ones.