When our friends from within the Tolkien Community heard we’re having a special birthday they sent us these lovely messages as part of our celebrations. So Happy 20th Anniversary TORn! Here’s to many many more!
Kia Ora TORn,
Happy 20th Anniversary, well done on making this wonderful achievement! We have been involved with TORn through one of your founding members Erica Challis, from New Zealand since 2002. We have enjoyed the fantastic Premier movie parties that Red Carpet Tours has provided and TORn attended, along with the stars from the films. Looking forward to future calibrations and hopefully a great Lotr TV series for all the fans. Congratulations again on 20 years! Best regards, Julie James and the team at Red Carpet Tours.
Happy 20th Birthday to TheOneRing.net from The Brisbane Tolkien Fellowship. We hope you continue to have another successful 20 years at least sharing the news of all things Middle-earth.
TORn 20th Anniversary Message from Gamling, Bruce Hopkins
Dear Friends at TheOneRing,
Congratulations on reaching the ripe old age of 20 ; ) Thank you for all the support and love you’ve given us all.
When I took the job of playing Ori in The Hobbit, I didn’t think I’d collect so many chums. Like the cast, you too are part of my extended dysfunctional Tolkien family!
Have a great celebration – drink, be merry… and avoid the green food! See you all soon. Adam x
A big happy 20th anniversary to TheOneRing.net ! All this time you have been delivering to us critical and wonderful news regarding the world of JRR Tolkien, from the books to the films to the Collectibles and everything in between. May 20 more years be forthcoming!
Cheers, Jerry Vanderstelt
Our good friend Donato Giancola also has given us a mathom to offer to you all! For the next ten days, you can get 50% (!!) off on all of Donato’s incredible art prints. Just use the coupon code TORN at checkout. Take a look at the wonderful prints on sale, here. Thanks so much, Donato!
I can’t believe it’s been 20 years already – it’s been an amazing community to have been a part of, and all good wishes to everyone involved, from everyone at Welly-moot!
Jack Machiela Welly-moot.com
We will be adding more messages to this post as and when we receive them, so do check back! Thanks to everyone who has sent greetings and anniversary messages!
In celebration of Earth Day (a day of which hobbits especially would approve), our friends over at WB’s HobbitShop.com are having a special sale TODAY! They are offering six of their most popular Middle-earth shirts for just $12 each! Take a look at the sale here!
They also have a new hoody which will be of interest to Tolkien fans; it commemorates the 15th anniversary of the release of Peter Jackson’s Return of the King. A large ring and ring script logo can be found on the back, with the ring script also on the inside lining of the hood. Check it out here.
I recently visited “Tolkien – Maker of Middle-earth”, an exhibit at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City, which runs through May 12. The exhibit is the most extensive display of original Tolkien material gathered in one place for several generations. It includes pieces from The Morgan, The Bodlein Library archive at Oxford University, the Marquette University Libraries in Milwaukee, and private lenders. It takes you on a journey through the life of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (or as we know him – J.R.R.) with photos, letters, text, and Tolkien’s own work. For me, it was a truly awe-filled and emotional experience.
To enter the exhibit, you walk through the round green door of Bag End to behold a wall-sized mural of Tolkien’s painting of Hobbiton. There are other murals throughout the exhibit, and it is cool to see his work so large because things that are usually seen as tiny details are suddenly more apparent, and you are drawn in to the landscape. But the real attraction of the exhibit is Tolkien’s actual work.
On display is an extensive selection of his original drawings, paintings and hand-written manuscripts. I can’t possibly describe in words what it is like to stand in front of the original hand-painted dust jacket for “The Hobbit”, replete with Tolkien’s handwritten comments in the margins; to view “Conversations with Smaug” so closely that you can see J.R.R’s brushstrokes; to revel in the light of “The Forest of Lothlorien in Spring.” One of my personal favorites is “Bilbo Comes to the Huts of the Raft Elves”, the image chosen for the exhibition’s catalog cover. If you can’t make it to the museum, I highly recommend this book with the same title as the exhibit. It is available online and includes full color images of every piece in the exhibit along with the accompanying text.
Exhibition catalog available online
There are early sketches for The Doors of Durin, which were a special treat for me because I recently painted a life-sized version of the West-Gate of Moria (Speak “Friend” and Enter) at Scum and Villainy Cantina in Hollywood, where Torn Tuesday is broadcast from. There are even pages Tolkien created to look like they were from The Book of Mazarbul – the book that the Fellowship finds besides Balin’s tomb – hand-calligraphed, painted, torn and burnt. Tolkien the artist could have found himself a place on the team at WETA.
Page from The Book of Mazarbul
There were many manuscript pages filled with Tolkien’s tight, flourishy handwriting, written first in pencil, then erased and crossed-out, then written over in ink. It’s amazing to me that these were able to be deciphered and included in the books.
There were quite a few different, and often large, hand-drawn maps of Middle-earth; original book jackets for LotR; some of the charming drawings and letters from Father Christmas that Tolkien sent to his children. And there were illustrations I’d never seen before – beautiful pieces expressing Tolkien’s vision of Fairy and his ideas about how creativity flows. There were even full-sized newspaper pages crammed with his colorful doodles, some quite Elven in style.
One thing that really struck me was a hand-calligraphed
letter that was meant to be reproduced and included at the end of the Lord of
the Rings, but unfortunately, the publishers nixed the idea. The letter was
from Aragorn to Master Samwise, letting Sam know the King would be stopping for
a visit outside the Shire. The letter has two versions side-by-side written in
Tengwar – one in Sindarin, the common tongue, and one in the high-Elven speech,
Quenya.
Aragorn’s letter to Sam
And there was mention of an epilogue for LotR that Tolkien wanted to write. In it Sam was to tell his family what happens to all the characters after the end of the Lord of the Rings. When I researched this further, I found a snippet of his intended conclusion, which appears in the ninth volume of “The History of Middle-earth”:
‘… said Elanor. “A story is quite
different, even when it is about what happened. I wish I could go back to old
days!”
“Folk
of our sort often wish that,” said Sam. “You came at the end of a great age,
Elanor; but though it’s over… things don’t really end sharp like that… There
are still things for you to see, and maybe you’ll see them sooner than you
hope.”’
It makes me think Tolkien knew that his epic story would go on and on, even if he could never have imagined the film-making technology that would become available to make it happen.
I hope you have a chance to see the
exhibit, for it is truly incredible and a joy to behold.
It seems a long time ago that we first let you know about Lootcrate’s exciting Lord of the Rings crates. At last they are nearly here! If you want to join the fun for the first of the three crates, you need to sign up by March 30, (though should you miss that deadline, you can still sign up later for the subsequent packages). Full information can be found on Lootcrate’s website.
The good folks at Lootcrate have given us an exclusive reveal of a premier item which will ship in the first crate! The beautiful, stoneware Prancing Pony stein (below) is 12.7cm tall and 10.5cm in diameter. It features the pub logo on a medallion on the front. It’s a really lovely, weighty item of high quality, which feels great in the hand, and will make you feel like you’re back in Bree enjoying a pint after a hard day’s work (if you’ve ever done a hard day’s work…) This gorgeous collectible is exclusive to Lootcrate, and is just one of the treasures you will receive in the first crate! You can only get this stein if you sign up for the first Lord of the Rings one time only, limited edition crate. You only have five more days to sign up; don’t delay!
If you were lucky enough to attend opening day at the Emerald City Comic-Con in Seattle, Washington today, you may have had the opportunity to get an up-close look at the next awesome statue from our friends at Weta Workshop in their The Lord of The Rings statue line. Adding to the amazing scene set-up with the Boromir and Lurtz statues, we now have Aragorn at Amon Hen. In this piece, we get to see Aragorn as he races back to help save Boromir who has blown The Horn of Gondor in desperation as he defends Merry and Pippin from attack by Saruman’s Uruk-hai Orcs. Fans can sign up to be notified when this beautiful statue goes up for order, and as soon as it does you can count on us to let you know.
As we mentioned a while back, we have a new player in the Middle-earth Collectibles game. Iron Studios is going to be producing collectibles based on the best trilogy of all-time: “The Lord of the Rings,” of course! These pieces will be produced in 1:10 scale, which is smaller than other collectibles based on the trilogy. Despite being smaller from what we can see in the production photos the to be very well made. I have had the chance to see their Marvel pieces up close, so I have very high hopes we’re in for a real treat! All four pieces Gandalf the Grey, Frodo Baggins, standing Ringwraith, and attacking Ringwraith can be pre-ordered right now. They range from $95 for Frodo to $115 for Gandalf the Grey. Collectors can expect all of these figures to start landing during quarter four of 2019.
