Bernard II van Risamburgh

His carcasses are beautifully shaped, his mounts and marquetry are always in complete balance even when extremely elaborate, and there is a logic to his works that allows the eye to comprehend them effortlessly," wrote Ted Dell.

[4] His father, Bernard I van Risamburgh (died 1738), born in Groningen, was already working in Paris in 1696, when he was living in the heart of the furniture-making district, the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, and was marrying a Frenchwoman.

Francis J.B. Watson observed that his full last name was a bit long to fit onto the metal maindron that punched the letters into the wood, often under the marble top, rather than, as sometimes suggested, a symptom of enforced anonymity that would redound to the advantage of the marchands-merciers, the decorator-dealers for whom BVRB often worked.

[7] Bernard was already received as a master in the guild by the time the sequence of surviving books begins in 1735, and he was already working for the marchands-merciers, for his stamp appears on a commode veneered with lacquer panels that was delivered by the marchand-mercier Hébert for the use of Marie Lesczinska at Fontainebleau in 1737, and the trade card of Simon-Philippe Poirier, perhaps the best-known of the marchands-merciers, is sometimes found affixed to furniture stamped BVRB.

Royal château marks and inventory numbers painted on many of his surviving works, related to corresponding entries in the daybooks of the Garde-Meuble du Roi, attest to his role in supplying ébénisterie to the Crown over more than two decades, often through intermediaries such as Thomas-Joachim Hébert and Lazare Duvaux; he also provided furniture for the marchand-mercier Charles Darnault.