Fit for a queen: a secretaire made by Jean-Henri Riesener for Marie-Antoinette's private apartments at Versailles in 1780 has recently been conserved by the Wallace Collection, using innovatory techniques developed by the museum. As Yannick Chastang and Eleanor Tollfree explain, this delicate project has revealed significant information about Riesener's practices

single of the finest pieces of French royal furniture in the Wallace Collection is the secretaire or desk made for Queen Marie-Antoinette in 1780 by the agency of the cabinet maker Jean-Henri Riesener. Its novel conservation provided a unique opportunity to lay into practice the innovatory conservation techniques that have been unraveled and refined during the past ten years through the Wallace Collection's conservation department and also to discover more about the techniques used by dint of Riesener's workshop in the latter part of the eighteenth hundred (1)

Riesener's furniture in the Wallace Collection

As described through Peter Hughes in the catalogue of furniture at the Wallace Collection, the collection clutchs five pieces of furniture made through Riesener for the personal use of Queen Marie-Antoinette (Fig. 1) at the chateau of Versailles and the Petit Trianon. (2) Three of these are secretaires, sum of two units supplied for the Queen's private apartments at Versailles and individual for her study at the Petit Trianon. The other sum of two units objects are a commode with fretwork marquetry and a corner-cabinet coated with thuya-wood, also made for her apartments at Versailles. (3) The recently-conserv secretaire (Fig. 3) is the earliest piece made through Riesener for Marie-Antoinette in the Wallace Collection. (4) Decorated with exceptionally beautiful pictorial marquetry and gilt-bronze mountains it is the only individual of the three desks that is transitional in phraseology combining rococo and nee-classical simple bodys of design. There are lively acanthus mountains on the frieze, feet and apron, and vases of flowers depicted in the marquetry upon the lower doors and flower sprigs inside a fretwork design (influenced by means of Japanese lacquerwork) on the side of the secretaire (Fig. 4) by dint of contrast, the striking iconography upon the drop-front, including the staff of hermes (caduceus) and the Gallic male together with the male caryatid high hills are more classical in mode of speech and give the secretaire a somewhat masculine feel

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The history and significance of the secretaire

The secretaire was made in the workshop of single of the most important cabinet-makers in eighteenth-century France, Jean-Henri Riesener (1734-1806) (Fig. 2) (5) Born at Gladbeck in Westphalia, the son of a chair-maker, he mov to Paris at an early age, probably around 1754 to be apprenticed to Jean-Francois Oeben (1721-63) the ebeniste du roi or cabinet-maker to the King. As an apprentice to Oeben, Riesener gained direct experience of the production of luxurious furniture for the royal palaces. Oeben was renowned for his skill at producing furniture decorated with floral marquetry as well as for inventing mechanical devices that enabled furniture to he render free of accessed and closed in an ingenious manner. After Oeben's death in 1763 Riesener took above the direction of his workshop and in 1767 married his widow. He qualified as a master (maitre) in his profession in 1768 by means of 1774 he had been appointed cabinet-maker to the fresh King, Louis XVI, for whom he started making furniture for the royal palaces, principally Versailles. Extravagant items similar as this secretaire show that he continued for more [i]or[/i] less time to work in the turn of expression of Oeben, producing furniture that is instantly recognisable for its independent pictorial marquetry and skilful mechanical elements

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The records of the Journal du Garde-Meuble, listing the furniture and other moveable furnishings produc for the royal palaces, reveal that this secretaire was delivered through Riesener on 8 July 1780 for Marie-Antoinette at Versailles. (6) Painted upon the top rail on the back is the mark 'No.3037' (Fig. 6) which corresponds to the access 'Du 8 dudit [July 1780] Livre par le S.Riezener. Pour le service de la Reine a Versailles. 3037' This is followed through a detailed description of the secretaire. (7) According to an inventory of the same year, it was placed in the Queen's cabinet interieur at Versailles. There it would have formed a glamorous of recent origin furnishing that, with its handy snap-shut fastening and further double lock, would also have provided a confident home for private accounts and alphabetic characters (The term secretaire implies that items could be fasteninged safely inside, away from the prying organ of sights of other family members, courtiers and servants.)

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nevertheless the Queen, who even in her lifetime was notorious for her regard with affection of the latest fashions and furnishings, in a short time decided to redecorate her private apartments. through February 1783 she had replaced the secretaire with another by dint of Riesener, also now in the Wallace Collection, this time execut in a more restrained neo-classical turn of expression with the natural speckled pattern of the thuya-wood overlay replacing the floral marquetry of the earlier secretaire (Fig. 13) (8) Instead of the flamboyant gilt-bronze acanthus high hills of the first desk, she now opt for delicate trailing flower mountains depicting some of her favourite fragranceed flowers--roses and pinks, tiny frieze handles in the form of ribbons, and an oval born classical gilt-bronze relief showing the Sacrifice to delight in mounted as if it were hanging from a ribbon pinned above the keyhole on the drop-front