Model Ant Dining Chairs by Arne Jacobsen for Fritz Hansen, 1950s, Set of 4

For almost anybody else in the early 1950s, designing a three-legged chair inspired by the shape of an ant with its head raised would be unthinkable. But Arne Jacobsen (1902–71), the modernist Danish designer and architect, was always ahead of his time. His Ant chair is part of his legacy of designing avant-garde, unusual and revolutionary chairs like the Egg, the Swan and the Drop.

As a child, Jacobsen covered the Victorian wallpaper in his bedroom with white paint, the beginning of a lifetime of pioneering new ideas in design and architecture. Soon after graduating from the School of Architecture at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Jacobsen set up his own practice, through which he could further his ideal of “total design.” This meant that for the architecture projects he undertook — such as the revered SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen — he was involved in the design of everything down to the last detail: from the exterior structure to the door handles to the carpets.

Over time, this attention to detail evolved into a pursuit of perfect proportions, a quality that is most prominent in his organic furniture pieces like the Ant chair. Originally called the Model 3100 and designed for the cafeteria of Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, the spare Ant chair (Myren in Danish) was inspired by plywood furniture crafted by American designers Charles and Ray Eames. Assisted by his then-apprentice Verner Panton, who would apply what he learned at Jacobsen’s practice to his own Cone chair and more, Jacobsen applied the Eameses’ groundbreaking ideas to the construction of his two-piece Ant chair — a seat and backrest made from a single piece of molded plywood supported by tubular metal legs. While the chair’s silhouette was unusual for the time, so too were its three legs. But Jacobsen insisted that in order for the chair to be functional and stackable — also uncommon in the 1950s — it couldn’t be any other way.

“I based my work on a need. What chairs are needed?” asked Jacobsen. In working toward his mission of creating functional furniture, Jacobsen inadvertently also created some of the most imaginative designs of the 20th century. The Ant chair is one of his most well-known designs.

Jacobsen’s longtime collaborator, Fritz Hansen, introduced the three-legged Ant chair as stipulated in 1952, despite complaints about its instability, and only introduced a four-legged version after Jacobsen’s death. It’s still manufactured today by Fritz Hansen and is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and elsewhere.

When the Copenhagen-based furniture maker Fritz Hansen opened for business more than 140 years ago, the company — which today styles itself The Republic of Fritz Hansen — adhered to the traditional, time-honored Danish values of craftsmanship in woodworking and joinery. Yet thanks to the postwar innovations of Arne Jacobsen and others, Fritz Hansen would become the country’s leader in Scandinavian modern design using new, forward-looking materials and methods.

Fritz Hansen started his company in 1872, specializing in the manufacture of small furniture parts. In 1915, the firm became the first in Denmark to make chairs using steam-bent wood (a technique most familiar from birch used in the ubiquitous café chairs by Austrian maker Thonet). At the time, Fritz Hansen was best known for seating that featured curved legs and curlicue splats and referenced 18th-century Chippendale designs.

In the next few decades, the company promoted simple, plain chairs with slatted backs and cane or rush seats designed by such proto-modernist masters as Kaare Klint and Søren Hansen. Still, the most aesthetically striking piece Fritz Hansen produced in the first half of the 20th century was arguably the China chair of 1944 by Hans Wegner — and that piece, with its yoke-shaped bentwood back- and armrest, was based on seating manufactured in China during the Ming dynasty. (Wegner was moved by portraits he’d seen of Danish merchants in the Chinese chairs.) 

Everything changed in 1952 with Arne Jacobsen’s Ant chair. The collaboration between the architect and Fritz Hansen officially originated in 1934 — that year, Jacobsen created his inaugural piece for the manufacturer, the solid beechwood Bellevue chair for a restaurant commission. The Ant chair, however, was the breakthrough.

With assistance from his then-apprentice Verner Panton, Jacobsen designed the Ant chair for the cafeteria of a Danish healthcare company called Novo Nordisk. The chair was composed of a seat and backrest formed from a single piece of molded plywood attached, in its original iteration, to three tubular metal legs. Its silhouette suggests the shape of the insect’s body, and the lightweight, stackable chair and its biomorphic form became an international hit.

Jacobsen followed with more plywood successes, such as the Grand Prix chair of 1957. The following year he designed the SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen and its furnishings, including the Egg chair and the Swan chair. Those two upholstered pieces, with their lush, organic frames made of fiberglass-reinforced polyurethane, have become the two chairs most emblematic of mid-20th-century cool. Moreover, the Egg and Swan led Fritz Hansen to fully embrace new man-made materials, like foam, plastic and steel wire used to realize the avant-garde creations of later generations of designers with whom the firm collaborated, such as Piet Hein, Jørn Utzon (the architect of the Sydney Opera House) and Verner Panton. If the Fritz Hansen of 1872 would not now recognize his company, today’s connoisseurs certainly do.

Find a collection of vintage Fritz Hansen tables, lounge chairs, sofas and other furniture on 1stDibs.