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

Apollo, Oct, 2004 by Yannick Chastang, Eleanor Tollfree

(5) For a useful account of the life and work of Riesener, see Alexandre Pradere, French Furniture Makers: The Art of the Ebeniste from Louis XIV to the Revolution, London, 1989, pp. 370-87. On the design and production of decorative arts in the eighteenth century more generally, see John Whitehead, The French Interior in the Eighteenth Century, London, 1992, and Carolyn Sargentson, Merchants and Luxury Markets: The Marchands-Merciers of Eighteenth-Century Paris, London, 1996.

(6) The correlation between the numbers painted on items of furniture made for the royal palaces with the accounts of the Journal du Garde-Meuble, now in the Archives Nationales in Paris, was made by Pierre Verlet in the 1930s. For his comments on this piece in particular, see P. Verlet, Le Mobilier Royal Francais, vol. III: 'Meubles de la Couronne conserves en Angleterre et aux Etats-Unis', Paris, 1994, no. 18, pp. 162-65.

(7) See Hughes, op. cit., p. 976 for a full quotation of this entry.

(8) F303 in the Wallace Collection. See ibid., .no. 198, pp. 990-96 and Verlet, op. cit., no. 21, pp. 174-78.

(9) For further information on Benneman, also known as Beneman (he tended to use 'G. BENEMAN' as his stamp), see Pradere, op. cit., pp. 404-411, and Comte Francois de Salverte, Les Ebenistes du XVIIIe Siecle: Leurs Oeuvres et Leurs Marques, Paris and Brussels, 1927, pp. 17-19.

(10) Although this feature was also sometimes used by other high-quality cabinet-makers of the time, such as Jean-Francois Oeben and Jean-Francois Leleu (1729-1807, maitre 1764). Leleu, for example, used this technique for the secretaire (F301), now in the Wallace Collection.

(11) For example, see Paul Tear and Flavia Philp, 'Deterioration and treatment of eighteenth-century wood marquetry', in Velson Horie (ed.), The Conservation of Decorative Arts, London, 1997, pp. 117-26, and Paul Tear, 'The Cleaning and Conservation of the Balustrade of the Main Staircase of Hertford House', Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Wood and Furniture Conservation, Amsterdam, 11 October 1996, pp. 33-45.

(12) The secretaire (F301) is discussed, pre-conservation, in Hughes, op. cit., no. 192, pp. 941-48. For a short article on the conservation of the piece, see 'Showing its true colours' by Clare Stewart In NADFAS Review, Autumn-Winter 2001, pp. 24-25.

(13) We are grateful to all the scientists who helped with analysing the degraded finish on this secretaire and other pieces of furniture at the Wallace Collection, in particular Gregory Landrey, Richard Wolbers, Nicholas Eastaugh and especially Susan L. Buck. formerly at the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, who took the Cross-section photograph reproduced here.

(14) F.J.B. Watson, 'Puzzles and Problems in French Furniture Mounts', APOLLO, vol. XCV, no. 121 (March 1972), pp. 196-200.

(15) Ibid., p. 196.

(16) For example, the mounts on the wardrobe with a clock (F429 at the Wallace Collection), attributed to Andre-Charles Boulle, were originally fixed by means of threaded rods at the back of the mounts. This technical feature, now replaced by modern screws, was revealed during the conservation of the wardrobe in 2000. By contrast, the portrait of Madame de Pompadour by Francois Boucher (1703-70), painted in 1756 and now on loan to the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, shows a small table, possibly by Bernard II Vanrisamburgh (after 1696-c. 1766), where steel-headed screws have still been used as a means of fixing the mounts from the front.