sculp­ture chair by Fabri­cius and Kastholm, 1964

bo-ex first saw the light of day in 1951 as the export divi­sion of Bovirke, a fur­ni­ture man­u­fac­turer per­haps best known for pro­duc­ing works by Finn Juhl dur­ing the 50’s and early 60’s.

By that time, the com­pany had started col­lab­o­rat­ing with two promis­ing young fur­ni­ture design­ers Preben Fabri­cius (1931–1984) and Jør­gen Kastholm (1931–2007), whose ele­gant and time­less, yet inno­v­a­tive, designs would soon earn them world-renown. The cre­ative duo con­tin­ued to design sev­eral pieces for bo-ex, many of which have become bo-ex sig­na­ture pieces and are still pro­duced today.

In Decem­ber 1979 bo-ex fur­ni­ture was taken over by Gert and Jør­gen Auha­gen, two broth­ers who had been in the fur­ni­ture busi­ness for years and had estab­lished a solid rep­u­ta­tion in the indus­try through their work for Fritz Hansen and KEVI among oth­ers. They con­tin­ued to man­u­fac­ture the pop­u­lar designs by Fabri­cius and Kastholm as well as more recent works by the design duo Jør­gen Lund (1946-) and Ole Larsen (1945-). The bo-ex col­lec­tion was made up of ele­gant, func­tional and time­less pieces, all hand-crafted to per­fec­tion by some of the most skilled peo­ple in their field.

On a busi­ness trip in 1984 Gert Auha­gen acquired 5 pieces of what turned out to be the iconic Scim­i­tar chair by Preben Fabri­cius and Jør­gen Kastholm. It was first launched in 1963 as part of the bo-ex col­lec­tion but soon taken over by Ivan Schlechter, who still owned the license to man­u­fac­ture the chair. In 1988, Gert Auha­gen bought back the license from Ivan Schlechter and embarked on a long and com­pli­cated jour­ney towards bring­ing the chair back into pro­duc­tion. Fif­teen years later, the Scim­i­tar chair was finally re-launched, with the assis­tance and approval of the orig­i­nal designer Jør­gen Kastholm. A fur­ni­ture icon was reborn.

Hav­ing assumed sole own­er­ship of the com­pany in 1994, Gert Auha­gen con­tin­ues to be the very heart and soul of bo-ex fur­ni­ture. Any­one who has ever worked with him will con­firm that his stan­dards are sec­ond to none and that com­pro­mise is not some­thing he ever does. The qual­ity of crafts­man­ship pro­duced under his lead­er­ship is unri­valled and to this day noth­ing leaves the pro­duc­tion facil­i­ties with­out his dis­cern­ing seal of approval. Excel­lence is key and, as Gert Auha­gen says, “we hope that peo­ple will take pride in own­ing a lit­tle piece of per­fect rather than a lot of almost”.

A piece of bo-ex fur­ni­ture is an invest­ment for life which will only get bet­ter with age and use. It rep­re­sents a proud tra­di­tion of Dan­ish fur­ni­ture design and true crafts­man­ship in a time where mass-production has regret­tably become the norm.

The pas­sion for the work and the love of great design has always been the back­bone of the bo-ex ethos which is quite sim­ply about giv­ing the cus­tomer a lit­tle piece of per­fect.