A Japanese semiprecious stone processing company is selling a $450,000 yen ($3,400) office chair made out of a giant L-shaped piece of amethyst.
Factory-M, a Saitama-based store specializing in semiprecious natural stones, got a lot of attention after posting photos of its most recent offering on social media. The Japanese company shared three pics of what many mistook for a photoshopped meme or some sort of instrument of torture and needed to put out a statement clarifying that it was indeed a real product. Looking at the photos it’s easy to see why so many people thought it was some sort of meme, rather than an actual office chair, but factory-M insists that you can actually sit on it if you can afford to buy it.
Photo: factory-M/Twitter
Koichi Hasegawa, the founder and owner of factory-M, told reporters that he came up with the idea for the unusual-looking office chair while on a trip to the United States, looking for natural stones to bring home to Japan. Upon seeing this large L-shaped piece of amethyst, he immediately pictured it processed into a chair, and decided to go ahead with the idea.
Photo: factory-M/Twitter
The amethyst had to have its pointy shards ground down to make sitting on the stone safe, but it still doesn’t look very comfortable, despite Hasegawa claiming the opposite. The chair consists of the amethysts sitting on a reinforced metal frame, and factory-M claims that it can easily support a sumo wrestler, if need be.
Photo: factory-M/Twitter
As you can imagine, this unique office chair isn’t the lightest chair ever made. The piece of semiprecious stone alone weighs a whopping 88 kilograms, and with the metal frame included, the weight of the chair goes up to 99 kilograms, It’s a good thing you can roll it around if you need to move it.
Photo: factory-M/Twitter
Factory-M is charging 450,000 yen for its unique, uncomfortable-looking office chair, and Koichi Hasegawa claims that dozens of individuals and companies have expressed interest in acquiring it.
