BY CHARLES-GUILLAUME DIEHL, PARIS, THIRD QUARTER 19TH CENTURY

A native of Steinbach, Germany, Diehl (d.1885) settled in Paris in 1840. He established a large atelier at 39, rue Saint-Sébastien, where by 1870 he employed no less than six hundred craftsmen. Diehl participated in all the major international exhibitions during the middle of the 19th century commencing with the Great Exhibition in 1851. Various pieces by Diehl are in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Musée de l'Ecole de Nancy, Nancy and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Inlaid with the Romanov arms, the present fine quality table à thé may well have been supplied by Diehl to a member of the Russian Imperial family during the reign of Tsar Alexander II (d. 1881).