Sunstone Ornament - Nauvoo Temple

This awe-inspiring cultured marble Sunstone is a detailed replicas of those found on the Nauvoo Temple. The Nauvoo Temple Sunstone has an amazing history and is part of a depiction of the Temple found in Revelations 12:1  There are few gifts in Nauvoo that create an instant impression like these beautiful replicas of the Sunstones from the Nauvoo Temple.

Sunstone Symbolism

30 of these sunstones adorned the Nauvoo Temple. The first stonecutters responsible for these imposing sculptures were Benjamin Mitchell and Charles Lambert. When Lambert first arrived in Nauvoo, he desired to work on the Temple.  When he was told they were not looking to hire any stonecutters, he replied, “I have not come here to work for pay. I have come to help to build that house,” pointing to the Temple. It was the father of his wife Mary who made the coffins for Joseph and Hyrum Smith in 1844.

These stones represented the most expensive elements on the Temple. Unlike other portions of the Temple, workers who created them were compensated from the Temple storehouse as art, rather than labor.

In 1844, just a month before his martyrdom, Joseph visited the Temple site with Josiah Quincy. Josiah described his experience as follows: “Near the entrance of the temple we passed a workman who was labouring on a huge sun which had been chiselled from the solid rock….’General Smith’, said the man, looking up from his task, ‘is this the face you saw in vision?’ ‘Very near it’, answered the prophet.” There is great significance in these stones.

Brigham Young described them: “There are thirty capitals around the temple, each one composed of five stones, viz., one base stone, one large stone representing the sun rising just above the clouds, the lower part obscured; the third stone represents two hands each holding a trumpet, and the last two stones form a cap over the trumpet stone, and all these form the capital.”

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