Another famous artist in the delicate bronze mountings of the day was Pierre Gouthière. He commenced work some years later than Caffieri, being born in 1740; and, like his senior fellow craftsman, did not confine his attention to furniture, but exercised his fertility of design, and his passion for detail, in mounting bowls and vases of jasper, of Sêvres and of Oriental porcelain. The character of his work is less forcible than that of Caffieri, and comes nearer to what we shall presently recognise as the Louis Seize or Marie Antoinette style, to which period his work more properly belongs. In careful finish of minute details, it more resembles the fine goldsmith's work of the Renaissance. Gouthière was employed extensively by Madame du Barri; and at her execution, in 1793, he lost the enormous balance of 756,000 francs, which was due to him, but which debt the State repudiated, and the unfortunate man died in extreme poverty, the inmate of an almshouse. The designs of the celebrated tapestry of Gobelins and of Beauvais, used for the covering of the finest furniture of this time, also underwent a change; and instead of the representation of the chase, with a bold and vigorous rendering, we find shepherds and shepherdesses, nymphs and satyrs, the illustrations of La Fontaine's fables or renderings of Boucher's pictures. The arm chair, or _fauteuil_, with upholstered instead of open sides, was introduced into the suite of tapestry furniture, and the term by which it is known, "_chaise bergère_," seems to be a sign of the fashion of the day. Without doubt, the most important examples of _meubles de luxe_ of this reign is the famous "Bureau du Roi," made for Louis XV. in 1769, and which is fully described in the inventory of the "Garde Meuble" in the year 1775, under No. 2541. The description is very minute, and is fully quoted by M. Williamson in his valuable work, "Les Meubles d'Art du Mobilier National," occupying in space no less than thirty-seven lines of printed matter. Its size is five and a half feet long and three feet deep; the lines are the perfection of grace and symmetry; the marqueterie is in Riesener's best manner; the mountings are magnificent--reclining figures, foliage, laurel wreaths, and swags, chased with rare skill. The back of this famous bureau is as fully decorated as the front: it is signed, "Riesener, f. e., 1769, á l'arsenal de Paris." Riesener is said to have received the order for this celebrated piece of furniture--of which a full-page illustration is given--from the King in 1767, upon the occasion of the marriage of this favourite Court _ébeniste_ with the widow of his former master Oeben. Its production, therefore, would seem to have occupied about two years.