A PAIR OF GEORGE III BLUE-JOHN AND ALABASTER OBELISKS

This mantelpiece-garniture of pedestal-supported Egyptian obelisks evoke 'Eternity'. Sir Nathaniel Curzon (d. 1804), who introduced a tablet of Blue John, known as 'Miller's Vein', in the chimneypiece frieze of his State Apartment at Kedleston, Derbyshire in 1762, also displayed two such 'pyramids' beside the 'marble vases' on the 'Corridore' chimneypiece, where they were recorded in 1804 (Kedleston Hall, Guide Book, 1977, p. 14). The industrialist Matthew Boulton bought one such obelisk in 1768, when he wrote that he had found a use for 'Blew John...which is proper for turning into vases'; and obelisk drawings also feature in his Pattern Book (N. Goodison, Ormolu: The Work of Matthew Boulton, London, 1974, pp. 30, 138 and fig. 166). Similar obelisks are displayed in the Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, Derbyshire.