Ant (chair)

The Ant

Ant chair on display in Design Museum Denmark
Designer	Arne Jacobsen
Date	1952
Materials	Plastic, veneer
Style / tradition	Modernist
Sold by	Fritz Hansen (Denmark)

The Ant (Danish: Myren) chair is a classic of modern chair design. It was designed in 1952 by Arne Jacobsen for use in the canteen of the Danish pharmaceutical firm Novo Nordisk. The Ant was named for its approximate similarity to the outline of an ant with its head raised.

The chair was designed to be light, stable, easy to stack up, and to minimise tangling the user's feet. The original model had three plastic legs and a seat made from form-moulded laminated veneer; Novo ordered just 300 of them. They were manufactured by Fritz Hansen. The chair has since proved very popular although the plastic in the legs was replaced by tubular steel, and a version with four legs was also made.