RONTGEN, DAVID, sometimes called DAVID DE LUNE VILLE (1743-1807), German cabinet-maker, eldest son of Abra ham Röntgen, was born at Herrenhag on Aug. 1, 1743 and died at Wiesbaden on Feb. 12, 1807. In 1753 his father migrated to Neu wied, near Coblenz, where he established a furniture factory. He learned his trade in his father's workshop, and succeeded to the paternal business in 1772. At that time the name of the firm was already well known, but although he is always reckoned as one of the foreign cabinet-makers and workers in marquetry who, like Oeben and Riesener, achieved distinction in France during the su perb floraison of the Louis Seize style, he never ceased to live at Neuwied, where apparently the whole of his furniture was made, and merely had a shop, or show-room, in Paris. His first appear ance there was in Aug. 1774. He soon acquired favour with Marie Antoinette who appointed him her ebeniste-mechanicien. The powerful trade corporation of the disputed his right to sell in Paris furniture of foreign manufacture, and in 1780 he found it advisable to seek admission to the corporation. He introduced a new style of marquetry, in which light and shade, instead of being represented as hitherto by burning, smoking or engraving the materials, were indicated by small pieces of wood so arranged as to create the impression of pietra dura. He was also
proficient in constructing furniture in which mechanical devices played a great part, and unquestionably much of the reputation he enjoyed among contemporaries is explained by his mechanical genius. Röntgen also had shops in Berlin and St. Petersburg, and twice went to Russia when he sold to the Empress Catherine fur niture to the value of 20,000 roubles, to which she added a per sonal present of 5,000 roubles and a gold snuff-box—in recogni tion of his ingenuity in surmounting a secretaire with a clock in dicating the date of the Russian naval victory over the Turks at Cheshme, news of which had arrived on the previous evening. In 1793 the Revolutionary government seized the contents of and his personal belongings. Five years later the invasion of Neuwied led to the closing of his workshops to which prosperity never returned.
See F. de Salverte, Les Ebenistes du XVIII. Siecle (1927).