The Teschen Table (Breteuil Table)
Johann Christian Neuber (1732-1808) · 1779-1780
An oval table whose top is a geological map of Saxony. One hundred and twenty-eight samples of agates, jaspers, petrified wood and other fine stones are set into gilt bronze, each one numbered, and a small booklet dated seventeen eighty, kept in one of the drawers, identifies every stone and the place where it was found. Among them, in Meissen porcelain, are medallions with allegories of Peace. Look at the precision with which the Dresden goldsmith Johann Christian Neuber fitted each stone into its bronze cell; he was famous for gold boxes in this technique.
The table is a diplomatic thank-you. In seventeen seventy-nine the Treaty of Teschen ended the War of the Bavarian Succession between Austria and Prussia, and the French ambassador, the Baron de Breteuil, had been its chief mediator. The Elector of Saxony, Frederick Augustus the Third, gave him this table in gratitude, and it stayed with the Breteuil family for more than two centuries. Declared a national treasure, it was bought by the Louvre in two thousand fourteen and fifteen through a public appeal that drew four thousand six hundred donors, with the Friends of the Louvre and several companies and foundations.
Did You Know? Four thousand six hundred members of the public chipped in to keep this table in France.
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