MARTIN CARLIN : SECRETAIRE LOUIS XVI

In spite of his French name, Martin Carlin (1730-1785 ) was born in Germany and emigrated to Paris to become an ébéniste . He settled there with other German and Flemish craftsmen and took employment in the workshop of Jean-François Oeben, whose sister he married.

He was never famous nor rich during his lifetime. Until his death in 1785, Martin Carlin was the ébéniste most frequently employed by the marchands-merciers to mount porcelain plaques on furniture; this piece is likely to have been made for one of them.

It wont be a consolation to his dead body to know that in 1972 a secretaire like this one sold for $ 312,500 and that two centuries after his death the same piece fetched exactly one million dollars on auction.

CARLIN : MARIA FEODOROVNA WRITING DESK

German born Martin Carlin (1730-1785) went to France to work as an ebenist and was neither very successful nor rich but he made a considerable amount of nice piece of furnitures which was mainly bought by the Rue du Fbg St Martin (Paris) furniture dealers of the time.

Tzarina Maria Feodorovna of Württemberg, wife of Emperor Paul I of Russia, bought a Martin Carlin writing desk which she used in her palace of Pavlovsk, near St Petersburg. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 it was bought by the English art dealer Lord Duveen and eventually arrived in the collection of Anna Dodge, wife of the founder of the American car company. In 1971, the Dodge collection was put for sale on auction and this writing desk was sold to the Iranian art collector and oil magnate Habib Sabet for $ 415,800, thus becoming the owner of the most expensive piece of furniture in history.

At that time TIME magazine ironized about the St Vitus's dance of the International Art Market and asked "who needs masterpieces at that prices"? After the Iranian revolution of 1979 it was smuggled out of Iran and, twelve years later, once more sold on auction for £ 918,000 ($1.3 million) to the P.Getty Museum of Ma;ibu. This time TIME Magazine prudently abstained from any sort of ironical comments. No wonder Iranian people do not like American people today....