Ant Chair 3101

Designstory

Arne Jacobsen Ant chair from Fritz Hansen

Design

The Ant chair was developed by the architect and designer Arne Jacobsen in 1951 for the canteen of the pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk and went into production at Fritz Hansen a year later. Jacobsen was inspired by the shape of an ant with its head raised, something reflected in the narrowing in the lower section of the backrest. The Fritz Hansen chair owes its minimalist, elegant appearance to the seat shell, which is made from a single piece of bent veneer plywood. The process of gluing layers enhances the natural properties of the wood and ensures elasticity and comfort, as the seat shell adapts to the movements of the user. The comfortable, stackable and comparatively light all-purpose Ant chair is also suitable for seating events in larger rooms. Originally the Ant chair was produced with a three legged base, but today the variant with four legs, the Arne Jacobsen Ant 3101, is more common. The original Ant 3100 design is however still produced by Fritz Hansen.

Manufacturing

Fritz Hansen's production site is located in Allerød north of Copenhagen. Amongst the most convincing seal of quality for the Fritz Hansen chairs is the almost 70 years of experience in their production. The seat and back of the Ant chair consist of a single shape. This is made from nine layers of veneer that are cut, glued and pressed into the shape; Fritz Hansen has always used beech wood as the core veneer, and a selection of different clearly varnished woods is used as the top veneer. After the seat shell has been completed, it is connected by hand to the chrome plated tubular steel frame. Every single Ant chair goes through strict quality controls at Fritz Hansen, a control process which goes far beyond national and international guidelines and specifications. Fritz Hansen also undertakes to make a voluntary contribution to sustainable development and makes this transparent for its customers in the form of an annual, publicly accessible Corporate Social Responsibility report.

Designer

Arne Jacobsen, whose work has often been compared to Mies van der Rohe's or Charles Eames’, cannot be ignored when it comes to modern design and modern architecture. Jacobsen, who was born in Copenhagen in 1902, already drew passionately from nature as a child and initially trained as a stonemason before studying architecture at the Royal Danish Academy of Art, graduating in 1927. His previous sculptural training and his special connection to nature were later to be clearly reflected in his sculptural furniture designs. Jacobsen created his first furniture designs for one of his first architectural projects, the so-called "House of the Future", which he designed in collaboration with the architect Flemming Lassen. He was to take this approach to extremes in one of his most famous buildings, the SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen, which was completed in 1960: Jacobsen was not only responsible for the architecture, but designed everything within the hotel, from the furniture to all fixtures and accessories himself. Some of his most legendary designs such as the Egg Chair or the AJ Lamps can be traced back to the interior design of the SAS Royal Hotel.

Historical Context

With its reduced, clear shape and the innovative manufacturing process of laminated wood, the Ant chair is typical of the functionalism that emerged at the Bauhaus in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century and which after the end of the Second World War became the epitome of modern design. Even at the Bauhaus, designers like Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who was to have a great influence on Arne Jacobsen, relied on the new industrial production possibilities and new materials. The beauty of an object should, true to the motto "form follows function", result solely from its functionality. While Arne Jacobsen's architecture remained stuck to the functionalist canon of forms of the post-war period, he developed a very independent, unmistakable style in his furniture designs, which is characterized by curved organic forms, which Jacobsen often adopted and abstracted directly from nature.

Manufacturer

The history of the furniture manufacturer Fritz Hansen begins in 1885 when the company was founded by the Danish carpenter, Fritz Hansen. With a flourishing workshop in Copenhagen, Fritz Hansen was able to quickly establish himself in the following years and soon took on prestigious and extensive furnishing contracts under the direction of Fritz Hansen's son Christian Hansen. Christian Hansen also began to experiment with steam bending plywood at the beginning of the 20th century, thus laying the foundation for furniture designs such as Arne Jacobsen's ant. The collaboration with Arne Jacobsen began in the 1930s and saw with works such as the Ant or the Series 7 chair, some of Fritz Hansen's greatest commercial successes and had a significant impact on the company. Today Fritz Hansen, with a balanced portfolio of classic and contemporary designer furniture, is one of the most popular and successful furniture manufacturers in the international market.