ctor of art treasures, had given 50,000
livres, appears to be lost. M. Luchet asks, with some truth, "Can you
imagine a financier, Jew or Christian, paying 100,000 francs for a new
bureau? Old, it would be another thing--an object of art to sell."
Boulle was most careful over his materials. He had 12,000 livres worth
of wood in his stores, fir, oak, walnut, battens, Norwegian wood, all
collected and kept long and carefully for the benefit of the work. He
also used real tortoiseshell, which, is replaced in the economical art
industry of the day with gelatine. The mountings were always chiselled,
cast quite roughly, so that the artist did nearly everything. He was
helped in this part of the work by Domenico Cucci and others. The inlay,
instead of being tortoiseshell, may have been horn, mother-of-pearl,
ivory, or wood; the motive, instead of brass, may be pewter, silver,
aluminium, or gold; it is still known by the name of Boulle work. Boulle
himself worked intarsia of wood also at intervals all through his life.
He died February 29th, 1732.

[Illustration: Plate 46.--_Cabinet belonging to Earl Granville. Boulle
work of about 1740._

_To face page 96._] [Illustration: Plate 47.--_Top of writing table in
the Saloon, Roehampton House. Period of Louis XV._]

[Illustration: Plate 48.--_Encoignure, signed J. F. Oeben, in the Jones
bequest, Victoria and Albert Museum._

_To face page 98._]

His pupil, J. F. Oeben, became "ebeniste du roi," with a lodging in the
_dependances_ of the Arsenal in 1754. He was marqueteur especially.
Examples of his work are both at South Kensington and in the Wallace
collection, and in the Gallerie d'Apollon at the Louvre is the great
secretary bureau, which he was making for Louis XV. at the time of his
death, in or about 1765. His widow carried on the establishment; her
foreman, J. Henry Riesener, completed the unfinished work. He was also a
German, born in 1735 at Gladbach, near Cologne, and coming to Paris
quite young entered Oeben's atelier. On his death he was made foreman,
and two years after, when he was thirty-two years of age, married his
master's widow. The year following 1768 he was received as master
_menuisier ebeniste_. In 1776 his wife died, and six years after he
married again, but was divorced as soon as the new legislation allowed
it. When he was married the first time he had no fortune, but fifteen
years after he declared in his marriage contract that there was then
owing t