1811-1885 • German — Considered among the most important cabinetmakers of the 19th-century, Charles-Guillaume Diehl, a native of Steinbach, Germany, traveled to Paris in 1840 and established a large atelier, where he employed no less than 600 craftsmen by 1870. Diehl participated in the Great Exhibition in 1851 and in all the major international exhibitions during the middle of the 19th century thereafter. At the 1867 Universal Exposition, Diehl was awarded a silver medal, and the winning cabinet he presented that year is one of the pieces of furniture most often cited and reproduced of the period. He exhibited it in 1873 at the Universal Exposition of Vienna and obtained a medal of progress. Diehl became a naturalized French citizen in 1872. His pieces are housed in such prestigious museums as the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Musée de l'Ecole de Nancy, Nancy and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
