Furniture Design Ideas

The workshop that initially employed fifteen assis­tants in the 1770s employed more than twenty-four in 1779. and up to forty before the Revolution (certain eye-witnesses even speak of three hundred). Its pro­duction was vast. It is more accurately to be called a manufactory than a workshop, as it was organized on an industrial rather than […]

REINE 1785 Although he lived and worked in Germany, Roentgen has a place in this book as he was admitted master in Paris. Born in the Rhine­land town of Neuwied, he was the son of Abraham Roentgen (1711 -93), a cabinet-maker and member of a zealous Protestant sect, the Herrnhuter. In 1772 David took over […]

The date of birth of Guillaume Benneman in Germany is unknown. He was trained as an ebeniste there and moved to Paris, where he worked independently in the rue du Faubourg Saint – /ntoine before receiving his first royal commissions in 1784; at the end of the 1780s he moved to 6 rue For­est in […]

Riesener is one of the few ebenistes of his time whose fame has extended beyond the limits of his profession. Together with Boulle and Cressent he is one of the very few £l^nistes mentioned in eighteenth-century sale catalogues. In contrast to them, Riesener was a recent immigrant from West­phalia. He was born in Gladbeck in […]

1735-1807; MAS TER 1752 B orn into a family of ebenistes established in the rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine. Saunier obtained his mastership very early but did not register it until 1765 when he took over the family workshop in which he had previously been working. He kept this workshop in the rue du Faubourg Saint […]

MASTER 1766 T his ebeniste was probably of Scandinavian extraction. On 26 March 1766 he became a master in Paris, where he was active for vir­tually the next twenty years. He settled at La Main d’Or in the rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine. The fur­niture bearing his stamp is in the Transitional style and dates from […]

c. 1730-85: MASTER 1766 Born probably around 1730. in the principality of Baden, Martin Carlin was the son of Trouper (Carlin, carpenter in Fribourg-en – Brisgau. Nothing is known of his apprenticeship or when he came to Paris, except that by 1759 he was set­tled there in the company of other C ierman and Flem­ish […]

1729-1807; MASTER 1764 J ean – Francois Leleu was born in Paris and was first apprenticed in the workshop of Jean-Fran<jois Oeben at the Arsenal. When the latter died in 1763. Leleu. aged thirty-four, seems to have wished to take over the workshop, but was supplanted by his younger colleague Riesener. who eventually married Oeben’s […]

MASTER 1774 This ebeniste was active until at least 1790. working in the rue du Faubourg-Saint – /ntoine. His work, which is very distinctive, usually takes the form of light pieces of furniture, tables and bonhcurs-du-jour with marquetry in a loz­enge pattern, the centres decorated with a florcttc. The woods used, satinwood, and stained maplewood, […]

B orn at Grcvenbroich in the northern Rhine­land. an area in Germany from which many eighteenth-century eb£nistes originated. Mathieu-Guillaume Cramer settled in Paris at an unknown date. When he married in 1771 he was already established as an independent ebenistc in the rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine; he was close to Carlin who was a witness […]