Object Status:
Unlocated
Accession Date:
February 26, 1808
Primary Source Reference:
Peale Museum Accessions Book, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, p. 29
Notes:
Blue John (also known as Derbyshire spar) is a semi-precious mineral, a rare form of fluorite with bands of a purple-blue or yellowish color. The Peale Museum's vase may have resembled the ca. 1815-1820 vase pictured here.
Pennsylvania Quaker Joseph Sansom (1767-1826) was the brother and business partner of prosperous Philadelphia merchant and East India trader William Sansom. Self-described as a merchant, Joseph Sansom used his resources to further interests in literature, travel, and the arts. As an amateur artist, he mastered the silhouette profile, producing his “physiognomical sketches” of “remarkable persons” from 1790 to 1792. He recorded portions of his three-year tour abroad in Letters from Europe during a Tour Through Switzerland and Italy, in the Years 1801 and 1802 (Philadelphia, 1805). The following year, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society and, in 1808, contributed to it his mineral collections and Roman relics. Jefferson Papers, Founders Online, National Archives / https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-40-02-0286 ; Charles Coleman Sellers, “Joseph Sansom, Philadelphia Silhouettist,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 88 (1964): 395–401
