The most recent research indicates that there were three Zwiener brothers from Herdon, Germany. The eldest brother Joseph had by the 1880s established a substantial workshop in the city of Breslau in Silesia, now in Western Poland. His younger brothers Emmanuel and Julius were by the same time working in Paris, establishing themselves as premier haut luxe cabinet makers of the period culminating in their being awarded a gold medal at the 1889 Paris Exposition universelle for an extraordinary jewellery cabinet, known as the serre-bijoux. In 1895, on receiving an important royal commission from Kaiser Wilhelm II of Prussia, Julius returned to Berlin to set up his own workshops and the same year his brother Emmanuel retired. A group of furniture produced by Julius Zwiener for the Kaiser was exhibited at the 1900 Paris Exposition universelle (see Sotheby's, New York, 29 June 1989, lots 270-5). Many of the pieces executed by Zwiener for the Prussian royal palaces were brought to Huis Doorn in the Netherlands in 1918, where the Kaiser lived in exile until his death in 1941.

An identical table whose mounts are incised ‘ZJ’, presumably for Julius, was offered at Christie's, London, 12 November 2020, lot 267. Further confusion has been caused by attributions of the ‘ZJ’ mark to Maison Jansen who bought the old Zwiener workshop at 2, rue de la Roquette, and much of the stock, on Emmanuel’s retirement in 1895. Therefore it is not possible to state with certainty if the present tea table, as with the aforementioned example, was made in Paris or Berlin. Julius Zwiener notably did make for Kaiser Wilhelm II a large suite of Louis XVI style furniture, some with blue jasperware plaques, now at Huis Doorn.