A Sycamore Veneered Secrétaire a Abattant, c1780
This secretaire was made by the German ébéniste David Roentgen, with marquetry decoration of wreaths and garlands of flowers suspended on ribbons. The decoration at the centre of the fall front, which encloses a number of small drawers around a tambour- fronted recess, depicts a marquetry bird perched in a ring. Below is a cupboard and the band of guilloche ornament across the frieze above disguises a drawer which springs open at the touch of a button. Such mechanical sophistication was a speciality of this craftsman, who received the title Ebéniste- Mécanicien du Roi et de la Reine after supplying a good deal of furniture to the French royal household in the 17705. Roentgen's workshop was at Neuwied on the Rhine, but he had subsidiary workshops in Berlin and Vienna as well as Paris and supplied furniture to important clients all over Europe. One of a group of German cabinetmakers favoured by Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette,
Roentgen was ruined by the French Revolution, when his Paris stocks were confiscated and his German workshops overrun and looted by Revolutionary soldiers.