Early Bopoint cabinet by Otto Schulz

Otto Schulz went on to run Firma Boet in Gothenburg for three decades. It was a successful interior design firm catering to a bourgeois clientele. It was both traditional and innovative. The firm was located on Avenyn, Gothenburg’s grand boulevard. It was here that Schulz founded the firm in 1920, after some ten years in Sweden. Born and trained in Germany, he had come to Sweden as an intern after completing his studies in Berlin. His shop was a show flat with drawing rooms, a library, a dining room and bedrooms. Here customers could walk around and buy not only furniture but also lighting, textiles and everything else that belonged in a home.

Otto Schulz is known today for furniture made using the techniques that defined its appearance, such as Bosaik, Botarsia and Bopoint. The cabinet in the auction is made using the latter, with a geometric decoration against antique-finished green velvet. As early as the 1910s and 1920s, Schulz frequently used upholstery nails, known by the older Swedish term tellikor, as decoration on his furniture. With these, patterns were created on cabinets, stools or tabletops. With the nails he could also emphasise or highlight details on these pieces. 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. The cabinet in the auction is an early example of this technique.