bv.ottem

Hand-made furniture for future generations

Alongside an award-winning career in graphic design, Bjørn Viggo Ottem launched bv.ottem to create enduring furniture for future generations to enjoy. Rooted in Tromsø, he has ambitions to show the world the quality craftsmanship his local region has to offer.

Furniture design, Bjørn Viggo Ottem tells us, should be a bit like the work of a high-end chef. Every dish a chef prepares should have the right combination of form and detail, texture and colour. But if they want to create a truly excellent food experience, Bjørn insists, a chef needs to spend time finding the best ingredients out there— ingredients that are locally, responsibly, and discerningly sourced. “Maybe it’s only because I love food and cooking,” Bjørn laughs, “but this analogy makes a lot of sense to me. Just as customers want traceable and sustainable ingredients in their meals, furniture design demands the same level of precision and care.”

For Bjørn, the quality and origin of the material he uses in his furniture production has come to be one of the most important elements of his design. Speaking to us from his workshop in Tromsø—whose window looks out over the snow on the hills across the fjord—Bjørn suggests this comes at least in part from an attachment to the place where he grew up.

“Whenever we welcome visitors to our city,” he says, “we want to show them what’s special about the region. We want them to eat the local fish or enjoy the local nature. We want them to see the local quality. In the long term, it’s my goal to prove that it’s possible to produce furniture in this part of the world, based on the resources that you find right here.”

Yet that’s not quite why Bjørn set up bv.ottem in the first place. In fact, while describing himself as a “chair addict”, Bjørn has not always been designing and making furniture at all. Instead, when he attended the Norwegian School of Craft and Design as a student, his specialism was graphic design and illustration. And with that training he joined the launch of Tank, the award-winning design studio, in 1999.

Bjørn’s interest in furniture actually came later. It was when he was refurbishing an old wooden cabin that he was struck by the power and value of tangible materials, he tells us.

“This whole experience gave me a lot of respect for wood as a material. That cabin has been standing there through 150 winters, and it’s been adding quality year on year.”

Since that moment, Bjørn began to complement his work at Tank, where he remains a partner, with a craft that produces something more tangible, more physical: the making of furniture.

“The things we make as graphic designers don’t really last— it’s all quite ephemeral,” he says. “I started bv.ottem because I wanted to build chairs for my three children, chairs that would be with them forever. That’s when I got in touch with Kim Daniel Arthur, founder of Ekte Furniture, for help, and he’s now my business partner.”

In April 2020, Bjørn and Kim officially launched bv.ottem. Now, thanks to hard work, a dedication to quality, and a funding award they received for prototype development, the brand has several ranges of hand-made furniture: the BV01 Lounge collection, the BV02 Planke Bench collection, and a forthcoming range of tables and benches.

All of these are built around what Bjørn tells us are his central concerns: contemporary design, high functionality, traceable materials, and proud craftsmanship.

“That cabin has been standing there through 150 winters, and it’s been adding quality year on year.”

For him, that means not only honest, transparent, and trustworthy conditions of sourcing and production, but also the right combination of form, texture, and quality.

“I try to give to all my furniture a sort of sculptural quality. My focus is on designing compelling forms that reveal their functionality and finesse as you approach them. Sustainable and traceable materials can’t do this alone—you also need design quality that outlives temporary trends.”

With a compelling range of furniture and an eager local audience, what is next for the bv.ottem brand?

“We have recently had a pop-up shop here in Tromsø, and now we want to focus on telling the world all about what we do,” Bjørn tells us.

“In the long term, we want to reach the position where people come here and we can say, ‘this is where we grow the wood for the furniture, this is the person who cuts and produces it, and we are the team that builds it’. That’s what sustainable, responsible production is all about. Just like the fish they eat in the restaurant, customers deserve to know exactly where their chair has come from.”

Ultimately, Bjørn is serious about taking on the world.

“When you start something like this, you have to have a bit of guts. You need to say, ‘we want to be an international company that wins awards’. At bv.ottem, that’s exactly what we want to do.” Instagram / @bvottem Facebook / @bvottem bvottem.no