Aluminium Garden FurnitureGarden Furniture Design

I accept that these may not strictly class as garden furniture in this picture, but I think these crazy jellyfish-like stools would make a great addition to most modern or contemporary garden. Alright so they’re probably not as comfortable as a deck chair and you almost certainly won’t fall asleep on one, as you might in a hammock – but they certainly are a cool way to share a glass of wine in the evening, or chill out while you throw a ball for the dog.

In my opinion, this kind of garden furniture will either look great, or totally out of place depending on the type of garden you have. Clean-cut modern gardens may well benefit from the addition of contemporary furnishings like these, where traditional gardens may only be marred by their presence. Of course, this is by no means a hard and fast rule; my garden is exceptionally traditional and filled with rustic garden furniture, yet I love the juxtaposition of placing crazy little statues and pieces of art around the place – it makes it like my very own Wonderland. Except much more manly of course… In the name of experimentation, I urge you all to buy something strange and put it somewhere in your garden. Go on, go crazy – you only live once (apparently).

Carved from single pieces of wood (I’m not sure which type of wood, but I don’t think it really matters), these huge hands support a wooden bench upon which even a King would be proud to perch his posterior. Potentially meant to inspire a feeling of being supported by Mother Earth (suitably, since somebody has had to kill quite a lot of tree to make it), this bench is without a doubt one of the most fascinating pieces of garden furniture I’ve seen. It’s sad to think that it is placed in a public place, where vandals will no doubt desecrate it; it should be immediately purchased by an investor and put it amongst a copse of trees in a classy park. Everybody knows vandals hate thickets.

Although some may question the point of it, I like this piece of garden furniture. Sure the oversized supports may obscure your view of the surrounding scenery, but this is about as close as you’re ever going to get to the feeling of being at God’s right (or left) hand. Perhaps they come alive at night and protect otherwise feckless tramps…

Although aluminium makes up 8% of the Earth’s solid surface by weight, using recycled aluminium to make garden furniture only takes 5% of the energy required to produce aluminium from ore.  For this reason, using recycled aluminium is high advantageous in the fight to reduce the damage we are doing to the planet.  The process of hand-crafting garden furniture from waste aluminium starts with smelting, in which ingots of aluminium are heated in crucibles until they melt into liquid aluminium.  This liquid metal is then hand-poured at a constant, continuous rate into sand moulds of the required component and left to cool naturally. 

When cooled and hardened, the sand-cast components are assembled.  In most cases they are bolted together for speed, allowing a quick turn over of products.  However, in the highest-quality manufacturing processes, the components welded together by hand, to using an aluminium solder to create a single piece of furniture.  This lack of fixings means provides the best possible stability and strength and makes welded furniture far preferable to the more common, bolted alternative.

Most alumimum garden funitureis a good choice, but recycled aluminium garden furniture is even better.