TAPESTRY TALES: TOLKIEN AT AUBUSSON
Image: Bilbo comes to the Huts of the Raft-Elves, detail, 2018, © Cité Internationale de la Tapisserie.
“He was always doodling,” Baillie Tolkien said of her father-in-law, J. R. R, creator of the fantasy novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. “… He did the crossword puzzles in The Times and made very beautiful doodles on the newspapers…For him it was very natural to draw…”
I’d just cut the last of the warp threads of a long tapestry attached to a horizontal loom in the weaving atelier of La Cité Internationale de la Tapisserie, Aubusson, in 2018.
Image: Bilbo comes to the Huts of the Raft-Elves, detail, 2018, © Cité Internationale de la Tapisserie.
The tapestry is an interpretation of one of J.R.R. Tolkien’s illustrations to The Hobbit (1937) “Bilbo comes to the Huts of the Raft-Elves” (chapter nine). It shows a landscape of sinuous trees with clouds of foliage shading a lemony sky and roots snaking down to the banks of the Forest River. Bobbing through its serpentine currents are six barrels floating towards the eastern edge of Mirkwood. These barrels contain the dwarves escaping the ElvenKing, while Bilbo is balancing on a barrel in the foreground, although in the novel he’s invisible as he wears the ring.
“It’s a marriage between French handicraft and the work of my very English father-in-law,” Baillie enthused. She is the wife of Christopher Tolkien, the author’s third son who used to manage the Tolkien estate and who died in 2020.
“Tolkien didn’t travel very much,” Baillie explained. “His landscapes were of places around the world, probably from photographs, but really it was all from his imagination.”
Image: On display: Bilbo comes to the Huts of the Raft-Elves, 2018, © Cité Internationale de la Tapisserie
Tolkien’s limpid fantastical world of magic and danger has been perfectly translated into pure flat colours keyed up from the diminutive book illustration. The Tolkien series of 13 tapestries based on the author’s drawings for The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion and The Father Christmas Letters was prompted by the curator’s desire to create modern wall hangings based on a celebrated literary work, as was the custom back in the 16th and 17th centuries. Twelve tapestries are more or less complete and six are currently on display at the Cité de la Tapisserie, where the town’s tapestry tradition is eloquently explored.
“He was always doodling,” Baillie Tolkien said of her father-in-law, J. R. R, creator of the fantasy novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. “… He did the crossword puzzles in The Times and made very beautiful doodles on the newspapers…For him it was very natural to draw…”
I’d just cut the last of the warp threads of a long tapestry attached to a horizontal loom in the weaving atelier of La Cité Internationale de la Tapisserie, Aubusson, in 2018.
Image: Bilbo comes to the Huts of the Raft-Elves, detail, 2018, © Cité Internationale de la Tapisserie.The tapestry is an interpretation of one of J.R.R. Tolkien’s illustrations to The Hobbit (1937) “Bilbo comes to the Huts of the Raft-Elves” (chapter nine). It shows a landscape of sinuous trees with clouds of foliage shading a lemony sky and roots snaking down to the banks of the Forest River. Bobbing through its serpentine currents are six barrels floating towards the eastern edge of Mirkwood. These barrels contain the dwarves escaping the ElvenKing, while Bilbo is balancing on a barrel in the foreground, although in the novel he’s invisible as he wears the ring.
“It’s a marriage between French handicraft and the work of my very English father-in-law,” Baillie enthused. She is the wife of Christopher Tolkien, the author’s third son who used to manage the Tolkien estate and who died in 2020.
“Tolkien didn’t travel very much,” Baillie explained. “His landscapes were of places around the world, probably from photographs, but really it was all from his imagination.”
Image: On display: Bilbo comes to the Huts of the Raft-Elves, 2018, © Cité Internationale de la TapisserieTolkien’s limpid fantastical world of magic and danger has been perfectly translated into pure flat colours keyed up from the diminutive book illustration. The Tolkien series of 13 tapestries based on the author’s drawings for The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion and The Father Christmas Letters was prompted by the curator’s desire to create modern wall hangings based on a celebrated literary work, as was the custom back in the 16th and 17th centuries. Twelve tapestries are more or less complete and six are currently on display at the Cité de la Tapisserie, where the town’s tapestry tradition is eloquently explored.