DesignerSwedish
Bror Boije
1 active items
Bror Boije's debut in furniture design came at age 26, with a chair that has outlasted most of its era. Born in Gothenburg in 1942, he spent the early part of the 1960s working in the design department at Volvo - an industrial training ground that would inform his later interest in structural clarity and materials. When he moved into furniture full-time, his first major commission was the Junker armchair for DUX in 1968, released under the DUX Bra Bohag label.
The Junker was a modernization of the classic safari chair, a form with roots in 19th-century campaign furniture that had been revisited repeatedly by Scandinavian designers. Boije's version stripped back the form while keeping its folding logic and the visual tension between the rigid frame and soft seating surface. The chair was well received and went into extended production, establishing Boije as a designer capable of working within established typologies while finding a new angle on them.
Through the 1970s and beyond, he widened his output considerably. His Wing chair, built on a tubular steel frame, became a second signature work and marked his breakthrough to broader recognition. He also designed the Flexi cabinet system for Horreds, an adaptable storage series that shows a different side of his practice - modular, practical, oriented toward everyday domestic use. His clients over the decades included DUX, Horreds, Asko, Swedese, and several institutional interiors including branches of H&M and the Swedish National Bank.
Boije's work sits comfortably within the Scandinavian functionalist tradition, but he was not ideologically tied to any single formal language. The Junker belongs to a natural-materials, craft-adjacent aesthetic, while the Wing and later pieces engage more directly with industrial processes and metal construction. This range is part of what made him a durable presence across manufacturers with quite different market positions.
In the Swedish auction database, Boije's 35 items divide predictably between chairs and armchairs (20 lots) and storage pieces including the Flexi cabinets (6 lots), with a few tables and sofas rounding out the picture. The Junker with ottoman has achieved the highest results, reaching 6,500 SEK for a chair and footstool set. Stockholms Auktionsverk Sickla and RA Auktionsverket Norrköping are the leading houses for his work. Prices are moderate relative to his place in Swedish design history, suggesting room for continued collector interest.