Martin Carlin

[3] The marriage contract reveals that "Carlin was still a day-worker living on the quai des Célestins".

[4] Yet soon after Oeben's death, Carlin started to sell furniture to the marchands-merciers when setting up independently in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.

Therefore, Carlin found it necessary to sell his works exclusively to marchands-merciers such as Simon-Philippe Poirier[5] and his partner Dominique Daguerre, who acted as decorative-designers.

For 12 years after becoming Master Ebéniste, he made porcelain-mounted furniture for Poirier and after 1778, he fed into the popular taste for exotic, 'oriental' designs and materials, and therefore started to produce sumptuous pieces in Japanese lacquer.

Although Martin Carlin made some larger pieces— secrétaires à abattant (drop-front secretary desks), tables, and commodes— he is best known for refined small furnishings in the neoclassical taste, some of them veneered with cut up panels of Chinese lacquer, which he would also have received from the hands of the marchands-merciers.