Børge Mogensen (1914-1972)
Børge Mogensen was born in Aalborg, Denmark. He started as a cabinetmaker in 1934, and studied furniture design at the College of Arts and Crafts in Copenhagen from 1936-38, and then at the Furniture School of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts from 1938-41.
The leader of the Furniture School was Professor Kaare Klint, whose influence on contemporary, Danish furniture design is legendary. Kaare Klint perceived Børge Mogensen as extraordinarily talented and he highly valued Mogensen's skills. This characteristic relationship led to a close co-operation between the teacher and the student. The co-operation was advantageous to both of them and in 1950 Mogensen was ready to establish his own design studio. .
In addition to mapping out the terrain of home storage, Mogensen was a prolific furniture designer, exhibiting almost every year at the Copenhagen Cabinetmaker's Guild Exhibitions. He was also the Head of Furniture Design during the 1940s for the Danish Cooperative
His furniture, strongly representative of his training as a traditional craftsman, was greatly appreciated by a public who had not yet become interested in modernism and the changes its influence had created on furniture and the decorative arts. Mogensen appeased these sceptics with his classical designs, but also, from the beginning of his career, subtly incorporated new ideas into his revisitation of traditional forms.