Jean-François Oeben

Jean-François Oëben , Johann Franz Oeben , is a cabinetmaker born with Aachen on October 9th 1721 but he lived mainly with Paris where he died on January 21st 1763.

He worked in the old workshop of Andre-Charles Boulle before obtaining a new workshop with the Gobelins in 1754. One knows nothing on life before the apprenticeship contract in the son Boulle (1751), except his marriage, in 1749, with Francoise Marguerite Vandercruse, sister of the cabinetmaker Roger Vandercruse (RVLC). Shining cabinetmaker, it obtained in 1761 the prestigious title of cabinetmaker of Roy in 1761, thanks to which it obtained a workshop with the Arsenal. Because of its housing in royal enclosures, it was exempted rules of the corporation of carpenters cabinetmakers. It was famous for its small pieces of furniture with mechanisms and its marquetries of a large smoothness. Its most famous work is the office of the king Louis XV, ordered in 1760. Oeben is deceased in 1763, before to have completed the piece of furniture well. Its succession gave place to a fight between its principal pupils, Jean-François Leleu and Jean-Henri Riesener. Riesener carried it and finished the office in 1769. Riesener having obtained its control only in 1768, the pieces of furniture produced between 1763 and 1768 carry the stamp of JF Oeben, but are not any more him. His/her Simon brother, also cabinetmaker (main in 1769), but of a less quality will have more a long career and wife like Jean-François, one of the sister of RVLC (Roger Vandercruse), Marie-Marguerite.

See too

List of famous cabinetmakers

Refer

Rosemarie Stratman Döhler, Jean François Oeben, ED. Perrin, aris, 2002, ISBN 2859173544, which included a catalog of all the parts known of (or allotted to) JF Oeben.

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