The Catbird Seat

Easy Chair, “Fresh Fat Chair”
Designer: Tom Dixon
Year: 2003 (?)
Description: extruded hand-woven plastic
Estimated cost: $2300

Why I chose this chair: I found an image of it on Google, and thought, “Wow, that is one UGLY chair!” I thought it was so unattractive that I should check it out.

Turns out it isn’t as ugly as I had originally imagined (the first picture did not do it justice), and it is made through a pretty neat process. It’s basically a specialized recyclable plastic that is heated, hand-molded and shaped, so each individual chair is completely unique.

Here’s the description of the process that I found online:

Imagine a huge glue gun: plastic pallets are fed into one end of the machine, which heats it up and the plastic comes out the other end molten. It’s extruded, or drawn out, into whatever shape you put on the end, a bit like cake decorating.

It comes out in a continuous amount, molten hot, but it creates a film on the outside very quickly, more like soft toffee than liquid. You wear cotton gloves to mould it, and you just have to touch the areas and it bonds where it touches, without leaving fingerprints.

Very cool.

Thanks to Lisa Gatherar of Suck UK for describing both the process and the meaning of “extruded” in this context. I had no idea of either prior to finding her write-up.

Apparently the appeal of this chair, design-wise, is three-fold (at least I can only find 3 among the websites that reference it):
1) it has an original and interesting design
2) it uses a eco-friendly material (recyclable plastic)
3) it redeems something industrial, ubiquitous and cheap (both literally and metaphorically) and makes it hand-made, unique and valuable (both literally and aesthetically)

I still think it’s fairly unattractive, but hey, what do I know?

I just wonder what it feels like to sit in it. As far as I’m concerned, when it comes to chairs, ultimately it’s all academic unless the chair is comfortable.

And you can quote me on that.