Joseph Smith Dictates the Book of Mormon Using His Seer Stone in a Hat

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Painted scene inside a dim log cabin lit by a small brass oil lamp on a wooden table. On the left, Joseph Smith sits in a brown coat with his head bowed and his face buried inside an upturned dark stovepipe hat held in both hands. On the right, scribe Oliver Cowdery sits in a dark coat, tan vest, white shirt, and black cravat, holding a white quill pen and writing on a sheet of paper; an inkwell and a small stack of pages rest near his right hand. A pewter mug stands on the table beside the lamp. Behind them is a stone-and-timber fireplace with a wooden mantel holding a candle and metal cup, a framed picture on the wall above, a hat hanging at upper left, and a shelf with books and pottery at upper right.

A painted depiction of Joseph Smith dictating the Book of Mormon to his scribe Oliver Cowdery by lamplight in a log cabin. Smith presses his face into an upturned stovepipe hat to read words that appeared on a seer stone placed inside, a method described in first-hand accounts by Emma Smith, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris. Although the LDS Church has long preferred imagery showing Smith working directly from the gold plates, the hat-and-stone process is now formally acknowledged in the Church's own Gospel Topics essays as the primary means by which the Book of Mormon was translated.

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