Furniture should be smaller, lighter and, if possible, easy to take apart, was the opinion of Rudolf Baresel-Bofinger when he took over his father’s cabinetry shop at the beginning of the 1950s. The first furniture in the new collection was licensed by clients. In his quest for the modular furniture of the future, he finally met Ulm pioneer Hans Gugelot and developed with him a product to series maturity that would enjoy a worldwide career: M 125, the first comprehensive cabinet and closet system.

Ulm, Braun, Bofinger

The visionary Bofinger – an aesthete first, and only then a businessman – had a passion for India and was in other respects as well an exception to the rule. The unorthodox thinker, alongside pioneers such as Christian Holzäpfel and Otto Zapf, played a key role in the early days of West German furniture design similar to that played by the Braun company in industrial design, whose owner, Erwin Braun, he knew personally. Both entrepreneurs were inspired by the Academy of Design in Ulm, where Gugelot taught. “What do we want?” a brochure from the 1960s asks: “Furniture that goes beyond every fashion trend”. This is a credo right in tune with classic functionalism, which was now to be developed further using modern means.