Børge Mogensen (1914-1972) Danish, Set of 4 Model 155 Shell Dining Chairs. Teak frame with oak backing and seating. 

Condition: Commensurate with use. 

Size: 20 x 19 x 30 in. 

Børge Mogensen was born on April 13th, 1914 in Aalborg, Denmark. He started as a cabinetmaker in 1934, and studied furniture design at the Danish School of Arts and Crafts in Copenhagen from 1936 to 1938, then trained for the next four years as an architect at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts’ School of Architecture. During this time he worked at various design studios around Copenhagen, including with Kaare Klint who instilled in him a deep commitment to producing classical, simple, and highly functional furniture. He also became interested in researching contemporary lifestyles, in order to develop domestic objects that are customized for specific uses. In 1942 he became the manager of FDB Møbler’s Furniture Design Studio, and three years later he was awarded the Bissen Scholarship which allowed him to work as a teaching assistant with Klint at the Academy for several years. In 1950 he was awarded the Eckersberg Medal and left FDB to found his own design studio, as well as spend more time with his wife Alice and their two sons. Continuing Klint’s innovative studies in how the size and proportion of objects should influence their design, Mogensen, collaborating with Grethe Meyer, produced a project in 1954 called the Boligens Byggeskabe (Construction Cupboards of the House), which introduced the idea of building shelving and storage units as part of a room, rather than purchasing and placing them in the space. Mogensen did further studies to determine the standard measures for thousands of common objects, and used the information to develop the “Øresund” shelving series, his magnum opus that he worked on from 1955 and 1967 in an effort to solve every conceivable storage need that could arise in the modern home. His work was featured in one-man exhibitions in Zurich, London, New York City, Stockholm, and Paris, and in addition to mapping out the terrain of home storage he was a prolific furniture designer, exhibiting almost every year of his working life at the Copenhagen Cabinetmaker’s Guild Exhibitions. Throughout his life he vacillated between a desire to incorporate innovative modern designs and a fierce loyalty to the straightforward functionalism that he was first trained on, perhaps best emblemized by his most successful work, the Spanish Chair, first produced in 1949 after over a decade of development. Mogensen also collaborated extensively with weaver Lis Ahlmann on textile designs, and, after Klint’s death in 1954, succeeded him as the chief designer for the Danish Museum of Decorative Art. He died on October 5th, 1972, a few months after being honored as a Royal Designer for Industry by the British Royal Society of Arts, and today he is still considered one of the most important among a generation of furniture designers who made the concept of “Danish Modern” known throughout the world.

Commensurate with use.