ALL ART BURNS

I’ve had my Hag Capisco for almost a year now and have a few thoughts to share about how much it’s changed my life. No, I’m not selling them, I didn’t get paid for this review, and I bought my Hag with my own, hard-earned money. The Hag Capisco is one of those discoveries I feel the need to share with anyone not smart enough to run away when I get that look in my eyes.

A little background if you haven’t heard of a Capisco. It is designed to be a perching chair — instead of putting all your weight on your butt and thighs while sitting you put some of your weight on the saddle seat and some of your weight on your feet. (I reviewed Galen Cranz’s “The Chair” last year, she discusses perching and the history of sitting on chairs in a fair amount of detail.)

Some differences between the Capisco and other “ergonomic” chairs:

• The chair back is not intended for support. Working while sitting on a Capisco is more like sitting on a backless stool or on the edge of a bed.
• The chair arms are far enough back that they are out of the way during normal use. You can lean back in a Capisco and rest your elbows on the arms to take a break, but when sitting upright the chair arms will not interfere with your arms.
• The chair has more (and different) adjustment options than many chairs I’ve owned. One of my favorite is the ability to slide the seat pan forwards and backwards to better accomodate different leg/butt ratios.
• The chair seat and back are both solid and firm. If there’s an opposite to the hammock-like bucket seats of an Aeron, this might just be it.

My seated (and standing) posture started improving within a few days of switching to the Capisco. It did take a couple of days for my back muscles to get used to holding me upright, but my body adjusted relatively quickly. It’s surprising just how much muscle tone I had to develop just to sit up straight for a few hours a day, but my back developed the muscle tone needed the same way my legs adjusted to living in a three-story house. I’m also fond of the feet rests that are on top of the casters. Normally with an office chair on casters, repositioning myself would require grabbing the chair with one hand to keep it from moving while I got up and sat back down. On the Capisco, I can make minor adjustments to my sitting position by simply lifting myself with my feet on the textured footrests, shifting a bit, then sitting back down.

Another change I’ve noticed is that it’s now easier (if not required) to move around quite a bit while sitting. In my old Aeron chair I could slump back and sit motionless for hours. On the Capisco, however, the only thing supporting me is my feet and butt. I’m able to sway, lean over, turn around, do all sorts of things that weren’t possible in the Aeron because I’m sitting on the chair instead of in the chair. (If you’ve ever been stuck in the rear bucket seats of a 70s muscle car, you know exactly what I’m talking about.) Sitting on a Capisco, I’m able to put things out of arm’s reach or on a shelf beside me and still get to them easily while working. In the Aeron, an item or task either had to be within arm’s reach or I had to get out of the chair.

There are a few downsides to the Capisco, but they’re mostly related to distribution and adjustment to a different sort of chair. Here in the states Hag chairs are damned difficult to test-drive unless you live near a major city. There was only one dealer in the greater San Francisco bay area that had a Capisco I could look at in person, something I like to do before dropping US $600 on a chair. Here in Pittsburgh I could only find one company even able to order a Capisco for me — they had none in their showroom to demonstrate. It took me a couple of months from initial contact before my chair arrived for me to pick up, I suspect due to the fact I was the first person in the area to ever order one of these. There’s also the cost of a Hag, and unlike the Aeron, there isn’t a surplus of used Hag chairs on the market that were freed up in the dot-com crash.

The Capisco does take a few days (if not a week) to get used to and for the first few days of use you’ll probably think it is uncomfortable or tiring. This is mostly your body complaining about having to build up some muscle tone needed to start doing the work of holding your head and spine in place.

Once you’re in a bit better shape, you’ll find the Capisco plenty comfortable.

If you have specific questions, let me know and I’ll update this review with text and photos as needed.

Q&A

Answers for some of the questions in the comments section:

• “Can you read heavy books in this chair?”: I would never consider doing any sort of reading in this chair unless the material was supported in front of me at a height that let me look straight ahead while reading. I’ve seen people using reading stands in beds and in other chairs, so you could probably find one that fit the Capisco. However, holding a book in your lap and looking down at it would probably defeat many of the benefits of using a Capisco. Yes, your weight would be distributed between your butt and your feet, but you’d also be bending your neck over at a very uncomfortable angle.
• “Can you take it apart?”:  Mine came disassembled, but I don’t remember the exact details.  I think it was in three pieces: the base with casters, the seat, and the back.

Technorati Tags: capisco, hag, review

(Note: This is a reference entry that I’ll cite in the future, that’s why it reads like a footnote.)

It’s hard to describe The Crucible without using their phrase, “An Educational Collaboration of Arts, Industry and Community”. The Crucible not only offers classes in a wide variety of industrial skills, the arts, and practical knowledge; they rent out studio space and work areas to artists and provide a venue for all manner of entertainment.

When I first took a class at The Crucible they were crammed into a horrible little building in Berkeley and our classroom was a storage room with a table in the middle. To be honest, I didn’t really notice or care — I was so absorbed in learning the tricks of working with electroluminescent wire that minor issues like lack of proper ventilation, noise from the power hammer in the main room, or rickity chairs simply didn’t register .

Now The Crucible is in a huge building in Oakland with wonderful classrooms, designated areas for various fabrication methods, plenty of power, light, and ventilation, and just about anything you could ask for in an industrial arts facility. More amazing, classes and studio time at the The Crucible are cheap. Cheap, cheap cheap, even when compared to something like the Pittsburgh Glass Center, located in a town with roughly half the cost of living as the Bay Area.

The Crucible is an amazing resource and other cities should be envious enough to fund similar ventures in their industrial districts. You can learn everything from neon to tig welding to blacksmithing to kinetic sculpture, share workspace with some truly inspiring and creative people, and not spend much money in the process. If you’ve ever wanted to build outdoor art for Burning Man, make a tricked out bicycle, blow glass, make sculpture out of scrap industrial equipment, or do damn near anything involving fire, metal, glass or electricity, head over to The Crucible. If you’re just wanting to pick up some useful life skills they also teach classes on basic metal working, motorcycle repair, sewing, and other skills useful to the modern DIY type.

Technorati Tags: art | Burning Man | industrial design | sculpture | welding

Stylin’ Pizza Cutters

An invasive species blog. What more do you need to know?

Not just a crayon sharpener, not just an electric crayon sharpener, but a X-Acto brand electric crayon sharpener.

Do-it-yourself 3D printer made from a glue gun and Meccanno.

Twenty-Five Years of Post-It Notes

Technorati: DIY | industrial design | pizza | weird

I had an “a-ha!” moment related to product design this week:

For the past few years we’ve been using an All-Clad brand teakettle we received as a gift. The first one started leaking at the base of the spout after a year or so and All-Clad replaced it. (The leak was caused by a poor quality weld, in my opinion) . Now after a year or so, the replacement has started leaking at the very same place. We’ve never been terribly fond of it: the polished stainless shows every bit of dirt or grime splashed on it while cooking something else on the stove, it’s easy to burn yourself on the handle or lid or while removing the stopper, the handle’s awkward, and so on. But it was a gift, it was certainly better than the $6 department store special I had before, and if you hold the kettle with a rag while you remove the spout, you probably won’t burn yourself…

But now that it’s started dripping boiling water while you’re pouring water for tea, the grumbling about “Yeah, but all the other teakettles suck, this one sucks less” started up again along with “what are we going to do for the three weeks we’re without a teakettle?”

Then while getting my afternoon mocha over at Peet’s the other day, I discovered the amazing Oxo Uplift Teakettle.

Why is it amazing? Well, when you pick it up and tilt it to pour out the hot water, the handle acts as a lever to open the spout. When you set it back down, the spout closes. It’s not only a great idea, it’s a great idea that works. On top of that, the handle is well insulated, it’s available in a wide range of colors, and it’s about half the price of an All-Clad brand teakettle.

I am reminded of two imporant observations:

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
— Albert Einstein

“Duh!”
— Amy Wong

Technorati: design | tea