US outing for ancien régime metalworker’s opulent craft

If, as the art historian Aby Warburg claimed, God is in the details, then divinity should be found in Pierre Gouthire: Virtuoso Gilder at the French Court, which opens at the Frick Collection this month. Gouthire (1732-1813)who is unknown, perhaps, to most audienceswas the metalworker who through the 1770s and 1780s supplied much of the incidental bits of French decorative art to Louis XVI and his court: chased bronze and gilt handles, supports, mounts and bases for hardstone, porcelain and ivor