Lord of the Rings - Goblets and Steins Part 1

Ever since I discovered the World of Hobbits and the Lord of the Rings novels I have been a fan. Wondering what it would be like to step into their world and taste the adventure. With the movie trilogy coming out, it brought back some great childhood memories. I was already experimenting with creating some new carved bowls with leaves and roots, when I thought it would be neat to make some matching goblets.

As I started building the goblets, I could feel different scenes from the novels and movie replaying in my mind. These just looked exactly like something Bilbo and Frodo would drink out of.

The first one was a goblet or rather a coffee mug. I then made a couple of bigger ones that I decided would make perfect beer steins. All was going according to plan until a friend showed up, upon whom I quickly tested my newest creation, and smirked at my new "beer steins". Now keep in mind this guy is no small midget but rather a fairly large fellow that would give Grizzly Adams a run for his money.

He picked one up, and not even by the handle, turned it over for closer inspection and commented that these were basically shooter glasses in the world of beer steins. Hmmmph! Keep in mind each one of these holds almost two two full beers - not a shooter in my world, or the one I had pictured in Middle Earth. Back to the drawing board, and with some slight modifications, significant increases in scale and proportions, and I think we might just have a Beer Stein even Beorn would be proud of.

Here is a picture of the first batch, ready to unload from the kiln after the first bisque firing. Today we glaze, tomorrow we fire again. Hope to soon have images of the first Steins ready to share.