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Lot Essay
Martin Carlin, maître in 1766.
Jean Jacques Pafrat, maître in 1785.
One of the most celebrated ébénistes of the Louis XVI period, Martin Carlin appears to have worked almost exclusively for the marchands-merciers. Married to the sister of Jean-François Oeben in 1759 and established au signe de la Colombe in the Grand-Rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine, Carlin shortly afterwards entered into the longstanding relationship with Simon-Philippe Poirier that would dominate his career. On Poirier's death, Dominique Daguerre succeeded to the business in the rue St. Honoré, and it was almost certainly Daguerre who commissioned these remarkable cabinets.
Jean Jacques Pafrat, maître in 1785, is known to have completed a number of pieces of furniture by Carlin on the latter's death. One example is a porcelain-mounted gueridon in the Jones Collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, reputedly given by Queen Marie Antoinette to Lady Auckland in 1786, it was made and signed by Carlin, and also bears the stamp of Pafrat (see: Jones Collection, catalogue, pl. 28). A secretaire à abattant and matching commode by Carlin is in the Huntington Collection, Pasadena. The veneering is closely related to the present secretaire, with panels of foliate and radiating parquetry, while they also feature the same frieze mount of scrolling foliage (illustrated, S. Bennet and C. Sargentson ed., French Art of the Eighteenth Century at the Huntington, New Haven, 2007, pp. 101-4, cat. 25).
Jean Jacques Pafrat, maître in 1785.
One of the most celebrated ébénistes of the Louis XVI period, Martin Carlin appears to have worked almost exclusively for the marchands-merciers. Married to the sister of Jean-François Oeben in 1759 and established au signe de la Colombe in the Grand-Rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine, Carlin shortly afterwards entered into the longstanding relationship with Simon-Philippe Poirier that would dominate his career. On Poirier's death, Dominique Daguerre succeeded to the business in the rue St. Honoré, and it was almost certainly Daguerre who commissioned these remarkable cabinets.
Jean Jacques Pafrat, maître in 1785, is known to have completed a number of pieces of furniture by Carlin on the latter's death. One example is a porcelain-mounted gueridon in the Jones Collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, reputedly given by Queen Marie Antoinette to Lady Auckland in 1786, it was made and signed by Carlin, and also bears the stamp of Pafrat (see: Jones Collection, catalogue, pl. 28). A secretaire à abattant and matching commode by Carlin is in the Huntington Collection, Pasadena. The veneering is closely related to the present secretaire, with panels of foliate and radiating parquetry, while they also feature the same frieze mount of scrolling foliage (illustrated, S. Bennet and C. Sargentson ed., French Art of the Eighteenth Century at the Huntington, New Haven, 2007, pp. 101-4, cat. 25).