If you have by any chance read my ‘about’ section, you may have noticed I mention my quest for the perfect dinner table chair. Well, I should probably update that text now, as the hunt is over. I’ve got the chairs.

I first saw this Arne Jacobsen creation at a design fair in Brussels. There was a seller who had three of them, in black, in good condition. It turned out he had just sold them to someone in London, for 1000 Euro each. Because these chairs, of course, were out of production and not too many were to be had in the vintage market. This did not surprise me. Things I like have an annoying tendency to be either unavailable or very expensive. Or an interesting combination of both. Anyway, back to the chairs.

The Munkegaard Chair – or the Mosquito, as it’s also known – was designed by Jacobsen around the same time as the more famous Ant chair, in 1955. I find the Mosquito more elegant and interesting. To be fair, the latter might partly be because the Ant is so ubiquitous that it lacks the freshness of the Munkegaard. Whatever the psychology behind my chair-appreciation, I started to trawl the vintage furniture sites for the elusive Mosquitos.

I didn’t have much luck. I quickly realized that it’ll be impossible to find 12 chairs all at once, I would have to order by twos or threes and hope it all fitted together in the end. But then, unexpectedly, I read that HOWE had put the chair back to production. While this may have reduced their exclusivity, it did not lessen my enthusiasm. Especially if the alternative was not to have the chairs at all.

A dozen Munkegaards arrived last week, in different colours and wood finishes. They are as beautiful in real life as they were on the pictures and because the shape is so simple, they are very easy to mix and match. As a bonus, they are comfortable. Although I would have been willing to suffer for beauty.