In the only two legal documents to have survived concerning Boulle’s workshop (the deed of gift, or ‘acle dc delaissement’ to his sons and the inventory taken after his death in 1732) the various items described are linked to the names of those who ordered them, thus enabling us to distinguish his principal clients. These were mainly financiers, ministers or important officials: Claude Francois dc la Croix (died 1729); Fran – qois-Christophe Lalive (1674-1753); Paulin Pondre (died 1723); Samuel Bernard (died 1739); Paul Poisson de Bourvalais (died 1719), owner of the Chateau de Champs; Pierre Crozat (1665-1740) and his brother Antoine (1655-1738); Nicolas Desmaretz (died 1721); Bernard de Cottebianche; Jean de Sau – vion (who went bankrupt in 1701); Jean Phelypeaux (1646-1711), brother of the minister Pontchartrain: Pierre Thome (1649-1710) who was one of Boulle’s
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/16/ Design for a bureau commissioned to Robert de Cotte for Philip V’s palace m Madrid, the redecorating of which de Cotte directed c. 1712. Several pieces of furniture were ordered
most important clients and creditors; Pierre (iruyn (died 1722); Etienne Moulle (died 1702) whose famous collection was already mentioned in the Livre commode des adresses de Paris in 1692; Pierre Langlois (died 1719); the minister Louvois (died 1693); Jac – ques-Louis de Beringhen (1651-1723); Claude Іл? Bas de Montargis (1659-1741), Jules Hardouin-Mansart’s son-in-law; Pierre Delpech (1642-1712); Moyse – Augustin de Fontanieu (died 1725), superintendant of the Garde-Meuble Royal from 1711.
To this list of financiers and ministers must be added other important figures such as (Cardinal de Rohan (1674-1749) and foreign princes such as Philip V of Spain, who in 1713 ordered from Boulle through Rol>ert de Cotte a commode and bureau in bois des Indes with gill-bronze mounts’ for 3.586L |16). In 1718-19 de Cotte again commissioned Boulle to make two commodes with gilt-bronze mounts at a cost of 1,675 livres for Joscph-Clementz of Bavaria. Elector of Cologne in Bonn. His clients among the members of the royal family included the Due de Bourbon, who ordered several pieces of furniture for Chantilly in 1720, the Regent, the Due d’Orleans and his daughter the Duchessede Berry (died 1719). In his work on Boulle. Jean-Pierre Samoyault has carried out an indispensable study of the probate inventories of Boulle’s clients. Eighteenth-century guides of Paris also describe numerous cabinets de curiosite’ containing Boulle furniture still bought directly from the workshop. The most well-known cabinet of curiosities belonged to Blondel dc Gagny. and it is well worth reading its description in the Dictionnaircpilloresque et historique by Hebert in 1766. Jean de Jullienne (1686-1766) also had an im|X)rtant collection of Boulle furniture which he would seem to have assembled in the 1720s.
