Biography

German cabinet-maker, active in France where he was the best-known cabinetmaker during the reign of Louis XVI. Born in the Westphalian town of Gladbeck, Riesener entered the Paris workshop of his fellow countryman Jean-François Oeben (1721-1763) 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.