DesignerDanish
Borge Mogesen
2 active items
Børge Mogensen designed the sofa in his living room for himself in 1962. That piece - the 2213, with its low seat, solid construction, and leather cushions tied with straps - became one of the most copied silhouettes in mid-century Scandinavian furniture. The fact that it started as a private commission, made for his own house, says something about how Mogensen worked: he designed things he believed in living with.
Born in Aalborg in 1914, Mogensen trained first as a cabinetmaker before moving to Copenhagen, where he studied at the School of Arts and Crafts from 1936 to 1938, then continued at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts under Kaare Klint. Klint's influence was fundamental - quality of construction, simplicity of line, furniture rooted in historical precedent rather than invented from nothing. But where Klint was a classicist, Mogensen was a pragmatist. In 1942 he was appointed chief designer of the FDB furniture studio, the Danish consumers' cooperative, where he spent eight years developing furniture that was functional, affordable, and built to last. The J39 chair, designed in 1947 and still in production, came out of this work - the "people's chair", in beech with a woven paper cord seat, sold through cooperative stores across Denmark.
After leaving FDB in 1950 to establish his own studio, Mogensen expanded his range while keeping his core commitments. He drew on English porter chairs, American Shaker furniture, and traditional Spanish forms - the Spanish Chair of 1958, in solid oak and saddle leather, is today one of the defining objects of Danish modernism. He also worked extensively with Swedish manufacturer Karl Andersson and Soner, producing the Oresund storage and seating systems that reflected his long-standing interest in modular, adaptable home environments. The Shaker-inspired Shaker table, which appears in Auctionist records under his name, was produced by Karl Andersson.
Mogensen received the Eckersberg Medal in 1950 and the Danish Furniture Prize in 1971. In 1972, months before his death at 58, he was named Honorary Royal Designer for Industry by the Royal Society of Arts in London and awarded the C.F. Hansen Medal.
On Auctionist, his furniture appears across Swedish auction houses including Stockholms Auktionsverk Magasin 5, Sodermanlands Auktionsverk, and Handelslaget Auktionsservice. The Oresund shelving and storage units, Fredericia sofas, and J39 chairs turn up most frequently. Realized prices sit in the range of 1,000 to 10,700 SEK for the pieces recorded here, with the Coupe sofa for Fredericia reaching the top. His work is consistently sought by collectors of Scandinavian mid-century furniture.