Full Grown, Rover, 2024

Full Grown’s work is held in major international museum collections, including The Storm Chair acquired by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2024); a Prototype Chair and early grown works acquired by the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh (2023–2024); The Boijmans Chair acquired by Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2024); The Paris Chair acquired by Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris (2024); The Goodall Chair acquired by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City (2024); The Enkidu Hanging Chair acquired by the Dresden Museum of Decorative Arts (2023); and a grown Willow Chair acquired by Manchester Metropolitan University (2023).

Exhibition highlights include Garden Futures at the Vitra Design Museum (2023), Het Nieuwe Instituut Rotterdam (2024–2025) and V&A Dundee (2025), the Saint-Étienne Design Biennale (2024), the presentation of the Edwardes Chair at Masterly Milano – Dutch Pavilion (2024), A Labour of Love at La Manufacture in Lille (2020), Plant Fever at Museum für Gestaltung Zürich (2021), The Banquet of Wonders at Château Perrier in Épernay (2023), and the UK Pavilion at the Beijing Horticultural Expo (2019). Their recent programme also includes collaborations with Louis Vuitton for the Chelsea in Bloom presentation in New York (2024) and garden exhibitions in Helsinki and Rotterdam (2024–2025).

Full Grown were awarded the Créateurs Design Award for Best Design Collaboration (2024), recognised for Best Contemporary Design Piece at Design Miami Paris (2023), and nominated for the NCA Sustainability Award (2024).

Recent talks include participation in the Unity of Nature series with Unity Magazine and Bioratorium (2024), alongside public programmes for Garden Futures at the Vitra Design Museum, Het Nieuwe Instituut and V&A Dundee.

Their practice has been widely featured in major international press, including The Guardian, Architectural Digest, The Financial Times, Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, Wired, Vice, Reuters, CBS News, MIT Technology Review, Design Week, Euronews, and CNN International.

Perhaps best described as botanical craftsmen, Full Grown employ ancient techniques to grow their tree-chairs, manipulating a bough’s directions of growth through custom frames and grafting together new furniture forms in the live tree. They integrate the artistic and romantic into the scientific, and urge us to reconsider the way we produce our everyday objects. These carbon sink grown sculptures are functional, beautiful objets d’art.

“Sometimes you see a collection which makes you feel like there is hope for the world. Full Grown has that collection. Made with so much love and knowledge about nature. An asset to the world.”

- Nicole Uniquole, Curator Dutch Pavilion, Salone del Mobile, Milano 2018

The first seed of Full Grown was sown when as a young boy playing in the garden, Gavin noticed an overgrown bonsai tree had the distinct appearance of a chair. It was an image that stayed in his mind for 25 years. After studying Art at Chesterfield, Furniture Design at Leeds Becket University and a stint with a London Design Studio, Gavin worked as an apprentice to a traditional cabinet-maker before travelling to Scotland to build a replica Saxon Barn and after this, to California to build eco-houses and furniture using sustainable materials. Gavin founded Full Grown during 2006 and has built the business from scratch. His invaluable experience over the past 12 years has made him a leading expert in the expanding field of bio-design, developing new techniques and experimental approaches. Gavin runs Full Grown with Alice Munro.

Full Grown

Rover, 2024

Willow

135 H x 80 W x 80 D cm
53.1 H x 31.5 W x 31.5 D in

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PAD London

Art Fair

10 - 15 Oct 2023

At PAD London we will showcase ‘Chamber’, a global survey of material-led, specialist endemic design. Chamber speaks to the abundance of the earth from which our artist-designer-makers sustainably source and...