Which metalworking firm began fabricating the statue's arm and head?

Gaget, Gauthier & Co. began fabricating the Statue of Liberty’s arm and head. The Paris metalworking firm worked with sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi on the statue’s copper skin, shaped by the repoussé technique, in which heated sheets were hammered over forms.

Bartholdi advanced these major sections before the complete design was settled. The torch-bearing arm was displayed at Philadelphia’s Centennial Exposition in 1876 and later stood in New York’s Madison Square Park. The head appeared at the 1878 Paris World’s Fair, helping attract publicity and donations.

The firm’s work predates Gustave Eiffel’s crucial contribution. After architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc died in 1879, Eiffel and Maurice Koechlin redesigned the statue’s internal support as an iron truss tower. That framework was separate from the copper exterior fabricated by Gaget, Gauthier & Co.

A common mix-up is naming Eiffel as the builder of the whole statue. He designed its structural skeleton, while Bartholdi designed the monument and the French workshop produced the early copper sections. The completed statue was dedicated in New York Harbor in 1886.