Børge Mogensen worked as an apprentice cabinetmaker in Aalborg from 1933 to -34 and trained at the School of Arts and Crafts in Copenhagen from 1936- 38. Mogensen was a student in Kaare Klint’s furniture design class at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen while also working for several architects and designers, including Klint and Mogens Koch until 1942.
Annually from 1939 until 1962, Mogensen participated in the exhibitions of the Copenhagen Cabinetmakers’ Guild. In 1942 Mogensen became the head of the furniture section of the Association of Danish Consumer, a position he had until 1950, designing a.o. the J39 chair (Folkestolen) in 1947. Two years earlier, Mogensen began collaborating with Hans J. Wegner and together they designed the Spoke-Back wooden sofa, initially produced by Fritz Hansen but later by Frederika Stolefabrik. Also in 1945, and for two years Mogensen worked as an assistant to Kaare Klint at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen where he also investigated the development of standard dimensions for various furniture.
In 1948 Mogensen and Wegner participated in the Competition for Low-Cost Furniture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Mogensen founded his own design studio in Frederiksberg near Copenhagen in 1950, from where he worked on both handicrafted furniture as well as developing lines of functional furniture for serial manufacture for producers in Denmark and Sweden such as Fritz Hansen, KA & Söner, Frederika Möbelfabrik and NK Möbler.
From 1953, Mogesen worked as an artistic consultant to the textile producer C. Olesen, where he collaborated with Lis Ahlmann. In 1954 Mogensen deisgned the modular storage system Boligens Byggeskabe for Boligen together with Danish architect Grethe Meyer. On the Byggeskabe, Mogensen and Meyer used the standard dimensions for furniture that Mogensen had developed together with Kaare Klint.
In 1958 Mogesen designed his well-known Spanish chair for Frederica Stolefabrik. From 1955 to -68 Mogesen worked on the Øresund furniture series for the manufacturer Karl Andersson & Söner in Sweden. Øresund consisted of several chairs, storage – and shelf systems as well as sideboard and tables made of massive oak with seats in seaweed, leather or fabric. For many years the collection became one of the company’s most successful and was in 1961 followed by the Asserbo chair and table series in pine.
Børge Mogensen was awarded the Eckersberg medal in 1950 and the Danish Furniture Prize in 1971 and in 1972 he was the recipient of the C.F. Hansen medal and was appointed Honorary Royal Designer for Industry at the Royal Society of Arts in London. He passed away the same year, at the age of 58.
