Sebastian Cox was walking through his four-acre woodland when he saw two branches from hazel trees stuck together.

"When I pried them apart I realized that what was keeping them together was fungus," he said.

Fast forward eighteen months and Cox is holding a fully formed, fungus-made lamp and stool in his workshop in southeast London.

A furniture maker by profession, Cox has focused on making wooden goods with minimized environmental impact, including as small of a carbon footprint as possible. When he saw how strongly fungus could hold together two wooden branches, he immediately wanted to see how he could incorporate this material into his own furniture-making practices.

Cox reached out to the British Mycological Society, who connected him with Minela Ivanova,