Arne Jacobsen: The Art of Creating Contemporary Furniture

By: Zack Fair
Submitted: 2008-05-22 11:32:55
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Arne Jacobsen was a Danish architect and designer who excelled at the Danish Modern style of building. Among his architectural successes he had many successes in the furniture genre. He made furniture for the Radisson SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen and St. Catherine’s College in Oxford, which he also designed and helped to build on the assumption that he would have a hand in all aspects of its building, down to the fixtures and cutlery used on the premises. His most noted chair designs include the Ant chair, the Model 3107 or Model 7 chair, the Egg chair and the Swan chair.

In 1952 he designed the Ant chair with an emphasis on the classic of modern chair design. It was designed specifically for use in the canteen of the Danish pharmaceutical firm Novo Nordisk. The name was derived from its similarity to the outline of an ant with its head raised. Its design makes it light, stable and easy to stack. It also minimizes the tangling of the user’s feet. When it was first designed, it only had three legs made of plastic and the seat was made from form-molded laminated veneer. With its popularity the plastic legs were replaced with tubular steel legs and a version with four legs was also created.

The Model 3107 chair, also known as the Model 7 chair was designed in 1955. Its design featured a unique technique in which plywood could be bent in two dimensions. Because of its popularity, it is the most copied chair in the world. This chair comes with a number of different undercarriages: both as a regular four-legged chair, an office chair with five wheels and as a barstool. It also comes with armrests, an attached writing table and different forms of upholstering. To some extent these additions mar the simple aesthetics of the chair, even though they provide practical elements to the piece.

The Egg chair was designed in 1958 and in the typical Jacobsen style which held no fear of pushing a material to its limit and often used entirely new materials to make his designs come true. This chair was featured in “Men in Black” and “Back to the Future II.” This contemporary chair was also designed as a couch, but only a few were produced. The limited production of the Egg couch was due its being an exclusive item as well as the difficulty in making it. It also held a design-flaw because it was hard to cover with only two cowhides, which is only just possible with the Egg chair.

The Swan chair was designed in 1958. This design was the result of Jacobsen’s search for a lightweight, fluid seating which required a minimum of padding. The fluid design had no straight lines, only curves. A molded shell of synthetic material on an aluminum star swivel base completes the design. A layer of cold foam coves the shell and either fabric or leather in a wide range of colors is added. There were also versions of a swan sofa that were designed as well and are still in production.

The Arne Jacobsen chairs are extremely sought after in the contemporary market because they provide fluid lines as well as giving a sort of “futuristic” feel to a room. The multiple designs of seating that he made provides something for everyone, no matter their tastes.

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