Haupt was the son of a Nuremberg carpenter[1] and learnt his trade as an apprentice of Johan Conrad Eckstein in Stockholm, after which he travelled as a journeyman to Amsterdam, Paris and London.

Haupt learnt his trade during a period when the French rococo had established itself in Swedish furniture design, but came to Paris in 1764, when the neoclassical style later known under the name of Louis XVI had started to gain ground.

He had come to London at some point before early February 1768, and may have been independently active as a cabinetmaker—a possibility thanks to the more liberal trade regulations in England—and remained there until July 1769, when his appointment as cabinetmaker to the King prompted him to return to Stockholm.

Haupt's style was characterized by detailed intarsia combining different woods of varying colour and structure.

After his death, his widow, Sara Catharina Thuring, continued to run the workshop until she remarried one of her husband's former journeymen, Gustaf Adolf Ditzinger, who had at that point recently become a master.