Robin Boyd’s Heritage Tree Becomes a Coveted Furniture Collection.

Knote Pine by Alexsandra Pontonio, made from 60-year-old Monterey Pine at Robin Boyd’s Walsh Street. Photo: Michael Pham.

Image of the Monterey Pine tree at Walsh Street before it died. Photo: John Gollings.

Details of Knote Pine by Alexsandra Pontonio. Photos: Michael Pham.

When a 22-metre Monterey Pine at Robin Boyd’s iconic Walsh Street residence died in 2019, it could have been the end of a 60-year story. Instead, it marked the beginning of something rather special.

The tree had witnessed decades of Australian modernist history, standing sentinel when Boyd designed his family home in 1957, preserving the mature pine that already graced the former ‘Prineyeh’ estate’s sunken rose garden. Boyd, famously critical of Australia’s post-war tendency to replace native vegetation with European alternatives, chose to design around the existing landscape—a decision that saw the Pinus radiata specifically heritage-listed as “T1” when Walsh Street was added to the Victorian Heritage Register in 2007.

Now, the Robin Boyd Foundation has commissioned Melbourne furniture maker Alexsandra Pontonio to give this significant timber a second life through Knot Pine, a limited-edition chair that challenges everything we think we know about pine as a material.

“Pine was embraced as a democratic material throughout the 20th century,” explains Robin Boyd Foundation Executive Director Josephine Briginshaw, referencing modernist pioneers like Gerrit Rietveld’s postwar Crate Chair and Enzo Mari’s Autoprogettazione project. “The beauty of the Monterey Pine timber combined with Alexsandra’s design and craft for Knot Pine flips this narrative on its head—it’s pine, but not as we know it.”

This transformation feels particularly meaningful given Boyd’s own philosophy. The architect and critic devoted an entire chapter in The Australian Ugliness to lamenting the destruction of Australia’s natural assets. His decision to preserve the Walsh Street pine wasn’t just practical—it was ideological.

For Pontonio, the project presented an opportunity she’d been seeking. “I had been wanting to work with pine for some time, as I was keen to challenge the conventional understanding of precious materials within the context of fine furniture,” she says. “I was so excited when I first received this brief, the heritage and history of this tree gave so much depth to this idea.”

The result elevates pine from its common perception as ‘cheap’ timber to something genuinely precious. Each piece in the edition of 20 is crafted from hardwax-oiled Walsh Street Monterey Pine, creating what Foundation Chair Tony Isaacson calls “a collector’s item” that honours the relationship between heritage tree and architecture.

Mary Featherston, friend and collaborator of Robin Boyd, offers perhaps the most poetic reflection: “The craggy black bark of the Walsh Street Monterey Pine has been familiar to me for sixty years. It is intriguing to now see the beauty of the timber revealed in the Knot Pine chair.”

Launched during Melbourne Design Week 2025, Knot Pine represents more than furniture design—it turns our attention to recognising value in unexpected places and honouring the stories embedded in the materials around us.

Knot Pine is available for purchase through the Robin Boyd Foundation, with proceeds supporting the Foundation’s ongoing work.

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Walsh Street, 1959, with a view of the Monterey Pine. Image courtesy of the Estate of Mark Strizic.

Alexsandra Pontonio’s Knot Pine in the making.

[Images courtesy of Robin Boyd Foundation. Photography by Michael Pham.]