Ant / model 3100 ¹⁹⁵²

For Arne Jacobsen, the Ant chair meant the start of his career as an industrial designer. Jacobsen was commissioned by the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo to design a light chair for its new canteen. Novo Terapeutisk Laboratorium had been producing a liquid insulin product as a remedy against diabetes since 1925. Jacobsen had already built their factory In 1935. He now designed a three-legged chair, which is simple to stack because three legs become less easily ­entangled than four. Manufacturer Fritz Hansen put the design into production a year later, and from 1955, the more stable and better-known variant on four legs, despite Jacobsen’s reluctance.

SOURCES

Carsten Thau en Kjeld Vindum, Arne Jacobsen, Danish Architectural Press, Copenhagen, 2001, pp. 389-393;
Novo Nordisk History via www.novonordisk.com.