Patience, they say, is a virtue. Anyone pre-ordering one of Gavin Munro’s wooden chairs should qualify for sainthood, as they will have to wait for up to 10 years before they can finally get to sit on it. This isn’t because Munro is a laggard when it comes to furniture making; it is just that he is, literally, growing your chair in a two-acre field in Derbyshire and you can’t hurry nature.
His customers “are going to have to wait”, he says. We meet at his “furniture orchard”, where supple young branches are trained into various shapes that will become chairs, as well as tables, mirror frames and lamps. “It is an investment piece and a dinner-party story. For quite some time.” What his customers get in return for several years’ supply of arboreal anecdotes, the thrill of long-delayed gratification and an outlay of thousands of pounds is something rather quirky and special: a piece of furniture...
