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Peter Petrou
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Blue John Vase
( England
1815
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Medium
Blue John
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Dimensions
61.00cm high
( 24.02 inches high)
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Literature:
Gem of the Peak by William Adams 1848
Derbyshire Blue John by Trevor D Ford pub 2000
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Description / Expertise
Blue John is the rarest natural formation in the British Isles and the only known deposit is found near Castleton in Derbyshire. This mineral only occurs in small masses lining ancient caves or in voids in the limestone and boulder bed of Treak Cliff. Each piece of Blue John has to be extracted carefully by hand as blasting with explosives would open the cleavages effectively shattering the semi-precious stone and rendering it useless. Instead, the usual mining practice is to extract the limestone around the Blue John and so release the latter from its enclosing rock. Nearly all the large ornamental nodules of this semi-precious stone were mined by about 1850 so making the production of large pieces such as this impossible.
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