Dominique Daguerre was a Parisian marchand-mercier[1] who was in partnership from 1772[2] with Simon-Philippe Poirier,[3] an arbiter of taste and the inventor of furniture mounted with Sèvres porcelain plaques; Daguerre assumed Poirier's business at La Couronne d'Or in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré in 1777/78. Daguerre commissioned furniture from ébénistes such as Adam Weisweiler, Martin Carlin and Claude-Charles Saunier, and menuisiers like Georges Jacob, for whom he would provide designs, for resale to his clients, in the manner of an interior decorator. A series of watercolours that Daguerre sent to Albert, Duke of Sachsen-Teschen, the brother-in-law of Marie Antoinette, who was refurnishing the castle of Laeken near Brussels, are at the Metropolitan Museum of Art[4]

By the early 1780s Daguerre had moved to London and formed a partnership with Martin-Eloi Lignereux, who remained in Paris. Daguerre set up premises in Sloane Street, Chelsea.[5] He was responsible for furnishing interiors at Carlton House, where his account in 1787 for furniture and furnishings totalled £14,565 13s 6d,[6] and at Brighton Pavilion for George, Prince of Wales, 1787-89. Even chimneypieces were imported from Paris, to be adjusted by craftsmen in London, according to surviving bills.[7]

At Carlton House, at Woburn Abbey, and for Earl Spencer at Althorp (1790)[8] Daguerre worked in loose collaboration with the architect Henry Holland, though he emphasized in one Carlton House bill, "son Altesse Royale Seul m'a donné des orders"[9] Similar sets of mahogany chairs by Georges Jacob, with openwork backs in lozenges and circles, are in the Royal Collection and in the Library, at Woburn, where Holland was executing alterations; they are likely to have been supplied through Daguerre.[10]

Notes

  1. ↑ The role of marchands-merciers, including Daguerre, has been recently analyzed by Carolyn Sargentson, Merchants and Luxury Markets: The Marchands Merciers of Eighteenth-Century Paris (Victoria and Albert Museum) 1996.
  2. ↑ Svend Eriksen, Early Neo-Classicism in France (1974) p 135.
  3. ↑ Daguerre was a cousin of Poirier's wife. (Eriksen 1974:215).
  4. ↑ Carl Christian Dauterman and James Parker, "The Porcelain Furniture" The Metropolitan Museum of Art BulletinNew Series, 18.9, "The Kress Galleries of French Decorative Arts' (May 1960, pp. 274-284) p. 281.
  5. ↑ Sir Ambrose Heal, London Furniture-Makers sub "Dominique Daguerre".
  6. ↑ Geoffrey de Bellaigue, "The Furnishings of the Chinese Drawing Room, Carlton House" The Burlington Magazine 109 No. 774 (September 1967, pp. 518-528)
  7. ↑ De Bellaigue 1967:524.
  8. ↑ Stroud 1966:101 notes that Lord Spencer had patronized Daguerre as early as his visit to Paris with Lady Spencer in 1785, making purchases for Spencer House, London.
  9. ↑ "His Royal Highness Alone gave me orders" Bellaigue 1967:527.
  10. ↑ Dorothy Stroud, Henry Holland, His Life and Architecture (1966), p 79.
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