Jean-Henri Riesener
(German, 1734–1806)
Place ActiveParis, France, Europe
SchoolFrench
BiographyBorn in the Westphalian town of Gladbeck, Riesener entered the Paris workshop of his fellow countryman Jean-François Oeben at the age of twenty-one. He married Oeben’s widow in 1767, and was accepted as a master into the guild of menuisiers-ébénistes the following year. In 1774 he became ébéniste du Roi under Louis XVI, and for the next ten years he was a principal supplier of veneered furniture to the Crown. After 1785 the royal treasury could no longer afford him, but he carried out commissions for Marie-Antoinette until the Revolution, retiring in 1800.Source: Art in The Frick Collection: Paintings, Sculpture, Decorative Arts, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996.
