His pupil, J. F. Oeben, became "ebeniste du roi," with a lodging in the
_dependances_ of the Arsenal in 1754. He was marqueteur especially.
Examples of his work are both at South Kensington and in the Wallace
collection, and in the Gallerie d'Apollon at the Louvre is the great
secretary bureau, which he was making for Louis XV. at the time of his
death, in or about 1765. His widow carried on the establishment; her
foreman, J. Henry Riesener, completed the unfinished work. He was also a
German, born in 1735 at Gladbach, near Cologne, and coming to Paris
quite young entered Oeben's atelier. On his death he was made foreman,
and two years after, when he was thirty-two years of age, married his
master's widow. The year following 1768 he was received as master
_menuisier ebeniste_. In 1776 his wife died, and six years after he
married again, but was divorced as soon as the new legislation allowed
it. When he was married the first time he had no fortune, but fifteen
years after he declared in his marriage contract that there was then
owing to him by the King, the royal family, and other debtors 504,571
livres, without counting the finished objects in his warehouses, his
models of bronze, his jewels, and personal effects, and several
important life annuities. Between 1775 and 1785 he received from the
Garde Meuble 500,000 livres, so profitable had the production of
furniture of the highest class become. He was in full work at the time
of the Revolution, and two of his finest pieces bear the dates 1790 and
1791 in their marquetry. When the furniture of the royal residences was
sold, Riesener bought back several pieces, being aided by Charles
Delacroix, the husband of his first wife's daughter, who directed the
sale at Versailles. He tried to sell these again, but with poor success,
and when he died, on January 8th, 1806, at the age of 71, he was again
almost without fortune. His beautiful bureau secretary in the Wallace
collection, made for Stanislas Leczinski, King of Poland, and dated
1769, shows him at his best. The workmanship is superb, and the design
most pleasing, almost the only point to which exception may be taken
being the crude green, obtained by staining, here and there. The
half-length of Secrecy in the oval cartouche at the back is as good as
the best Italian figure work, and was often reproduced by him. The
flower panels are particularly delicate and beautiful. There is an
upright secretary, also by him, in the same collection almost equally
delicate and beautiful in its marquetry decorations. The diaper patterns
so characteristic of this period are most beautifully executed, but are
not very interesting, and the mountings take the interest rather from
the marquetry, becoming more and more delicately designed and
elaborately worked. The principal woods used by Riesener were tulip and
rose wood, holly, maple, laburnum, purple wood, and sometimes snake
wood. His contemporary, David Roentgen, used principally pear, lime, and
light-coloured woods, burnt for the shades.