{"id":95206,"date":"2014-11-30T04:24:36","date_gmt":"2014-11-30T09:24:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/?p=95206"},"modified":"2014-11-30T04:24:36","modified_gmt":"2014-11-30T09:24:36","slug":"this-hand-illuminated-silmarillion-is-an-astonishing-work-of-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/2014\/11\/30\/95206-this-hand-illuminated-silmarillion-is-an-astonishing-work-of-art\/","title":{"rendered":"This hand-illuminated Silmarillion is an astonishing work of art"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"intro\"><figure id=\"attachment_75525\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-75525\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www-images.theonering.org\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/bensilbuch07-300x227.jpg\" alt=\"The Illuminated Silmarillion\" width=\"300\" height=\"227\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-75525 no-lazyload\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/bensilbuch07-300x227.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/bensilbuch07.jpg 593w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-75525\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Illuminated Silmarillion<\/figcaption><\/figure> We&#8217;ve <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/2013\/07\/12\/75523-weep-at-the-beauty-of-tolkiens-silmarillion-illuminated\/\">posted about this before<\/a>, but I was reminded of it today, and it&#8217;s such an astonishing hand-made work of art in an age of mass production that I truly don&#8217;t think anyone will mind seeing it again.<\/p>\n<p>Several years ago, German art student Benjaminn Harff set himself the task of hand-illuminating and binding a copy of J.R.R. Tolkien\u2019s <i>The Silmarillion<\/i>. More than six months later he was still at it. He explained the process to Tolkien Library&#8217;s Pieter Collier:<!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nAll the initials, the calligraphic pages and illumination was drawn and painted by hand. I used a steel-pen and indian ink as well as brushes and water colours. <\/p>\n<p>For the metal colours silver, gold and copper I took acrylics, because they are easier to handle than really laid gold and you can also work with water colour on acrylics.<\/p>\n<p>After this all the work had to be digitalized by scanning and fotography, followed by the fitting into the text.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www-images.theonering.org\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/bensilbuch06.jpg\" alt=\"Benjamin Harff&#039;s Edel-Silmarillion\" width=\"596\" height=\"499\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-33297 no-lazyload\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/bensilbuch06.jpg 596w, https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/bensilbuch06-300x251.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 596px) 100vw, 596px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>After printing the text at home on a Canon inkjet printer, and then illuminating the pages, he worked with a binder to assemble the individual leaves into a leather-bound book.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tolkienlibrary.com\/press\/902-Benjamin-Harff-Interview-Edel-Silmarillion.php\" target=\"_blank\">Go read the full interview here<\/a>, because it really is incredible stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;ve posted about this before, but I was reminded of it today, and it&#8217;s such an astonishing hand-made&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":95207,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[198,197,153,6,98,152],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fans-creations","category-fans","category-tolkien-life","category-tolkbooks","category-silmarillion","category-tolkien"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/silmarillion_6.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1tLoH-oLA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95206"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95211,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95206\/revisions\/95211"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}