Ant Chair Refresh
Completed: June, 2022
This is a real vintage Ant Chair by Arne Jacobsen. This chair is the second version of the Ant Chair, designed after Jacobsen's death in 1971- the original having three legs as opposed to four to match Arne's minimalistic beliefs. That makes these chairs roughly 40-50 years old. Due to the location these chairs were stored in, the veneer had begun to fail, resulting in a rough texture to the wood and chipping along all the edges.
Normally, furniture refurbishers avoid painting over veneer at all costs. However, this was a special case due to the weathered veneer and the DIY paint job that an owner of the chairs had previously done. Therefore, these chairs had to be fixed up and repainted to get them back to working condition. I sketched a series of ideas that accentuated the ant form of the chair using a pop-art or minimalistic style. I am personally fond of Arne Jacobsen's work and wanted to appreciate his legacy in some way with this refinish while at the same time, bring it into the modern, bright, and graphic world of furniture design.
Refinishing two of these chairs at once allowed me to get creative with the design. I used spray paint to get the gradient on the top and bottom surface of the chair, changing the placement of the colors for each so they could in a way "speak to each other". Using common house paint, I lined the edge of the chair with a very pale mint green to contrast the highly saturated magenta and orange gradient. Other than accenting the shape of the chair, the paint hid the small disconnect between the gradients on the top and bottom surface of the chair.
