Orla Mølgaard-Nielsen was a trained cabinetmaker who had worked under Kaare Klint and Arne Jacobsen before studies at the The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts – The School of Design in Copenhagen from where he graduated in 1934.
In 1944 Mølgaard-Nielsen joined the architectural firm of Peter Hvidt where the two of them worked together until 1977 with interior architecture and furniture design. Hvidt and Mølgaard-Nielsen worked mainly with industrially produced furniture, but they also designed pieces for several master carpenters in the Danish Snedkerlaugets Møbeludstillinger.
In 1945 they had their first exhibition together with Ludvig Pontoppidan but also worked together with A. J. Iversen, K. Thomsen, and Jacob Kjaer. The same year Hvidt and Mølgaard-Nielsen began designing furniture for export when the presented the Portex collection for producer Fritz Hansen, with pieces of a knock-down construction that could be shipped in flat packages to a low cost.
Together Hvidt and Mølgaard also designed furniture for France & Daverkosen and Søborg Møbelfabrik where their pieces for the later was well received by the contemporary public due to its use of teak and quality. Some of Hvidt and Mølgaard-Nielsen’s furniture were marketed by Illums Bolighus and sold in the USA.
Hvidt and Mølgaard-Nielsen participated in the annual exhibition of Snedkerlauget and at the Dansk Kunsthandverk exhibitions in Denmark as well abroad. They are represented at the Design Museum Denmark in Copenahagen, Nordenfjeldske Kunsindustrimuseum in Trondheim, Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery in Melbourne and the Museum of Furniture Studies in Stockholm.
