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Hi, you can call me Sayyer. I'm a queer autistic adult and I make art from time to time. This is a personal blog, not just an art one. To see my art (tagged my art), you can follow any of these links:
Art | Webcomic Blog | Ko-fi | Redbubble
Or you can find me elsewhere through my portal:
Links to all of artist Sayyer's socials and how to contact them for work.
⚠️Please do not repost my art to any site without my express permission. Do not use my art without my consent or credit. Do not use my art in generative AI or NFTs.
Commissions are CLOSED (Ko-fi)
This post is long, so read under the cut for the tags I use so that you can filter them if you need to (or click if you want to see something specific):
Other tags that I use:
Important - this contains things/issues that are important to me, some of the posts have descriptions of violence and other things that may be upsetting or triggering to some. I try my best to tag specifics).
Art tag - tagged art, both other people's and my art are found here.
Aesthetic posts are tagged a.
Cats
Beautiful People - a collection of images, gifs, and videos of people (a lot of these have eye contact - so block for that/scopophobia).
Videos - tagged videos
Humor - tagged lmaoooo
Refs - tagged ref; a collection of (mostly) art references, resources, and tutorials
Fan Stuff (I'm including the tag I use so you can block it using the filtering feature if it's not something you wanna see - or if you totally do, then you can just click the link):
Lord of the Rings - tagged as lotr
BTS - tagged as bts
GOT7 - tagged as got7
The Elder Scrolls - tagged elder scrolls, and each game is tagged as well - ESO, Skyrim, Oblivion, Morrowind
Dragon Age - tagged as dragon age and each game in the series Origins , Dragon Age 2, Inquisition, The Veilguard
Hades - tagged hades game (plus new hades ii stuff)
Dungeons & Dragons - tagged dnd
Baldur's Gate 3 - tagged bg3
Fan Art - tagged fanart (one word).
OC's: tagged my ocs. these tend to be from the games above (BG3, TES, and DA in particular) though, some are from my original comic also found on my webcomic blog (linked above).
I mostly talk in the tags (very rarely in a post), so you'll see this alongside the organizational tags.
I'm obsessed with this chair. The artist takes a flimsy hunk of injection-molded plastic that's been cost-cut to hell and back, and insists that we look at it with fresh eyes and understand its beauty. And they went about it in the most labor-intensive way I can think of.
Absolutely nothing about this design is convenient to execute in wood. Every piece is curved, most have compound curves. This is artisan craftsmanship: it's inherently slow, manual, and skilled. Notice, also, that most features of this chair must be thicker and heavier than on the plastic chairs being imitated. Injection-molded chairs can be produced in this shape in a matter of minutes with far less material at very low cost.
If these flowing, organic curves are so beautiful in polished wood, perhaps they are also beautiful in the mass-produced chairs that are far more accessible. Perhaps we should remember to admire designs that succeed enough to become ubiquitous. I don't know about you, but I'll never see injection-molded chairs the same way again.
I agree with all of this, but YOU HAVE HIT UPON A FORGOTTEN TRUTH OF PLASTIC CHAIRS!!!!!
The standard one-piece injection molded plastic chair is referred to as a "Monobloc", literally just describing it as a single piece. The history of this chair is fascinating, and it all starts back in 1946, with the D.C. Simpson Monobloc.
Douglas Colborne Simpson was an architect mostly active in the 40's and 50's, designing a lot of classic mid-century style buildings in Vancouver, Canada(1). In 1946, as part of a government project to find new uses for materials developed for WWII, he and engineer James Donahue developed the design you see above, simply called the Monobloc(2). Unfortunately, we don't know a lot about this chair as it was only ever a prototype, and no modern examples have survived, nor have most of the records surrounding it(3). To my knowledge, we don't actually know if this was technically injection molded, or crafted some other way. We can't even be sure if it was technically the inspiration for the designs that followed, but no matter the case it has lent its name to the entire genre.
Plastics technology was simply not what it is today back in the 1940's. Most people would have had very little plastic in their homes, most likely just a few pieces of Bakelite (the first commercially viable plastic, made from a formaldehyde based resin in a Bakelizer, the best name for any industrial manufacturing equipment ever). Over the following few decades, however, as a wider variety of plastics were both developed and came down in price to the point of commercial viability, the concept of the plastic chair was revisited, and the first folks to revisit it were Helmut Batzner, in 1964, and Joe Colombo, in 1965.
This, is the Bofinger chair, Batzner's design:
The elements of D.C.Simpson's Monobloc were pretty alien compared to todays mass-manufactured plastic chairs, but here we start to see some more modern elements come into play. The first thing you probably notice is the front legs, which have that characteristic visible 90 degree bend in them for added rigidity, plus a much more comfortably leaned back and slightly scoop-shaped seat. We also see much more support in the back rest, with broad triangles allowing for a more efficient use of materials without losing back support.
Similar to Simpson, Batzner was not an industrial designer, but an architect, and this chair had a very specific purpose. Batzner and his team designed it as part of a project to build a new theater in Karlsruhe, Germany, which required a large amount of additional seating which could be easily packed away into storage or distributed around the theaters rooms by the staff (4). As such, it was designed to be both lightweight and stackable, so several of them could be moved by one person, and they could be stored compactly. This piece of furniture was a huge hit a the theater, and was so popular that 120,000 units would ultimately be manufactured and sold around the world, with each one taking just 5 minutes to produce (4).
Around the same time, Joe Colombo enters the scene with this:
Colombo was an artist in several mediums who, after taking over his families appliance company in the 50's, made the shift towards architecture and interior design, and started designing a wide array of trend-setting furniture(5). The chair shown above is known as the Universale (sometimes referred to as the Chair Universal 4867), designed in 1965. This chair differs pretty greatly from the ones that came after it, it many ways it represents a different path that could have been taken, but it's also very widely referenced as an inspiration for what is broadly considered the origin of the white plastic chair the world over.
Enter: the Fauteuil 300
This is, arguably, the first iteration of the white plastic chair we all know today. Designed by Henry Massonnet in 1972, the Fauteuil 300 and it's imitators are, collectively, the single most widely used piece of furniture in the entire world(6). Before that, however, it was something else entirely: works of art.
What might be hard to recognize in hindsight is that all of these chairs described so far were not everyday objects. They were on the forefront of modern design, they made use of brand new materials and manufacturing processes, and at the time they were each made, they were slick, stylish, and fairly expensive. Despite the speed at which they could be manufactured, these innovative, high-end chairs rose sharply in cost up through the early 1980's due to the sheer demand for them. They weren't cheap spare seating you stuck in the garage, they were placed at dining tables and on fine patios, and they were a wildly popular talking point. That's not to say their expense justified their artistic value, but rather that their expense and popularity was a product of their status as highly contemporary and boundary-pushing designs.
With the price of plastics declining after the 70's, the increasing accessibility of injection molding to manufacturers, and the widespread popularity of these designs, copycats proliferated rapidly, and eventually drove the price down. This era, in the 80's and 90's, is when these chairs became cheap an ubiquitous, and where they became manufactured the world over.
And here is where we reach this piece, "Plastic chair in wood", by Maarten Baas, and a piece of the history I've left out so far. The Monobloc was designed to be made out of wood. Like the the other chairs designed by Joe Colombo, like the chairs that predated the Simpson, the Monobloc was designed with the intention of using laminated plywood, but as the artists and designers behind them began to experiment with new materials they fell in love with the idea of making them from plastic, and so they did. They redesigned and redesigned until they made something that would be impossible to make in wood at a price most people could afford, but which could be made from plastic in mere minutes. The organic curves and thin profiles would take so much time, so much waste material, so much skill and effort to create if made of wood that they could never be furniture, they could only be art. Baas' chair is a perfect, beautiful reflection of that.
That, in brief, is the history of the design of the white plastic Monobloc chair, but it's not all there is to know. In fact, it's kind of just the start. I've linked my sources below, but I would strongly recommend checking out the German documentary Monobloc, by Hauke Wendler. It goes over the history, but it's far more interested with what the Monobloc means, and what it's place is in our world today. The impact it's made, the better and the worse, and what it says about us. It's fascinating, and well worth your time.
The Scales of Seduction by Rien Gray [historical fiction, retelling, erotica]: An erotic lesbian monster novella reinterpreting the Medusa myth. Romance between Medusa and a basilisk warrior. Transfem butch protagonist.
Reverse Tomboy by Auto Anon [literary fiction, autofiction, essays]: A novella about a trans woman who struggles with relationships, familial dynamics, and reclaiming her masculinity after transitioning. Comes with an essay on transfeminine butchness and masculinities. Transfem Jewish butch protagonist and author.
Hot Girls with Balls by Benedict Nguyen [litfic, satire]: A contemporary satire novel about two trans lesbian volleyball players, who have to grapple with the anxieties of stardom as well as their their own off-court relationship drama. Transfem Asian-American protagonist. Transfem author.
Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian) by Hazel Jane Plante [litfic]: A trans lesbian mourns her straight trans friend, and comes to terms with her death by writing a personalized encyclopedia/love letter about the latter's favorite obscure TV show. Transfem soft butch protagonist. Transfem author.
Herculine by Grace Byron [litfic, horror]: A disaffected and traumatized young woman arrives at an all-trans girls commune founded by her toxic ex-girlfriend, only to discover something sinister afoot. Transfem butch love interest and side characters. Transfem author.
Our Monsters by Jemma Topaz (mystery, erotica, satire): In a futuristic city inhabited by monsters, a human woman tries to solve a series of grisly murders, while romancing several monster girls. Transfem butch love interest (poly romance, not the only love interest). Transfem author.
Always open to recs. Transfem butches are loved and appreciated, and I don't tolerate invisibilization of transfeminine people when speaking of butchness and lesbian masculinity.
