180. OTTO SCHULZ. A cabinet, Firma Boet, Gothenburg 1939, oak, upholstered in red artificial leather with pearl-spiked decor in the so-called bopoint of the sign of the zodiac.

Branded on the back Nest. Height 160, 130 x 40 cm

PROVENANCE
Bought in Gothenburg in 1939 by a young couple, a Swedish woman and a German man. A short time later, the couple moved to Berlin and the cabinet came with it. After barely three months, war broke out and the husband was drafted. The precious cabinet was now hidden in a Berlin cinema. The husband ended up in a Russian prison camp and returned to Berlin at the end of the war in 1945 and was reunited with his wife.When they then went back to the cinema, the cabinet remained behind the scene.The cabinet then returned home to Sweden at the end of the 1940s with the family.

HISTORIAN
Otto Schulz managed Firman Boet in Gothenburg for three decades. His firm was the equivalent of Firma Svenskt Tenn in Stockholm and he himself the counterpart of Josef Frank. It was a successful interior design firm that catered to the bourgeois audience. It was both traditional and innovative. The company was located on Avenyn - Göteborgs paradgata. Here he started the company in 1920 after about 10 years in Sweden. Born and educated in Germany, he came here as an intern after completing his studies in Berlin. His shop was a pattern apartment with salons, library, dining room and bedrooms, here customers could walk around and not only buy in furniture but also lighting textiles and everything else that belonged to a home. Otto Schulz is known today for his furniture made in the manufacturing techniques that characterized the appearance of the furniture such as Bosaik, Botarsia and Bopoint The latter is the auction cabinet made in with decoration of the sign of the zodiac against a red fund. It was already in the 1910s and 1920s that Schulz often used furniture nails, or as an older term, tellikor, as decorative decoration on his furniture. With these, designs were prepared on cabinets, stools or tabletops. With the furniture nails, he was able to clarify or highlight details on these pieces of furniture. During the 1930s, these techniques were brought together under the name Bopoint, which became a hallmark of Firma Boet's furniture production from the mid-1930s. As a technology, Bopoint is based on the combination of three materials - wood, leather or artificial leather and metal in the form tellikor. Bopoint was often used on cabinets, bar furniture and other splendour furniture. The technology also came to be used on mirror frames, dressers, table tops and stools, as well as trash cans. The furniture pins with their rounded heads, were nailed so that together side by side they formed perforated decorative lines, patterns or figurative motifs. The leather or artificial leather contributed to the fact that the furniture became less fragile, while at the same time being washable. The choice of colors combined with the decor allowed to combine in a variety of ways. Often the motifs were pictures from the zodiac such as the auction cabinets in red artificial leather decorated with signs of the zodiac, but also geometric, heraldic motifs, monograms with year and landscapes were available to order. An example of the latter was the cabinet we sold at the spring Moderna auction this spring with the decoration of “Paradise” against a fund in green artificial leather.