Handwriting From Tolkien & Lord Of The Rings

[jye]

Hi All,

 

I did a quick search and couldn't find any information on this topic - has anyone written an alphabet chart or samples of the Lord of the Rings/Hobbit/Tolkien's maps?

 

Jye

[johnmetta]

Start here: http://www.google.com/search?q=quenya+dictionary&aq=1&oq=queyna&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8

 

I used Queyna as the stylistic basis for a language I created years ago. Resources are much better now.

[jye]

Thanks for that - I had seen the queyna examples and agree it is good for styles.

 

Just picked this up too - http://mymodernquill.wordpress.com/2012/06/25/95/

 

Good sample of the English version.

 

"Unical" he calls it.

Edited February 6, 2013 by jye

[johnmetta]

Submitted that too soon. Didn't mean that to sound short. You're looking for two primary languages: Queyna and Sindarin. Search for those and you'll find what you need.

[jye]

Fabulous! plenty more to keep hunting for. also just found a nice little font sample.

 

http://www.fontspace.com/nancy-lorenz/party-business

[johnmetta]

Fantastic idea, by the way. It's been like 15 years since I've written in this script (was fairly fluent) but it would be a totally different feeling with a fountain pen!

[johnmetta]

Ha, I just re-read this. Sorry, you're talking English, I thought you were talking Elvish. You see, I'm just that much of a geek.

 

/me bows head

[Jimmy Joe]

"Unical" he calls it.

Uncial is a family of scripts that are quite old. They actually originate in the eastern, Greek-speaking portion of the Roman empire. Uncial was a strong influence on the insular (i.e., British and Irish) scripts, so today most people think it looks vaguely Celtic. In the particular sample you've linked to, the scribe has added extra dots to the Os, but otherwise it's a pretty straightforward Uncial variant.

 

When I write something in Uncial in my classroom, invariably one of students will comment that it "looks like Lord of the Rings".

[thang1thang2]

This thread might be of interest to you.

 

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/index.php?/topic/228550-in-a-hole-in-the-ground/

[Paddler]

My copies of Tolkien's books all have alphabet charts in them. There is a chart for the Angerthas and the Tengwar. They also have maps, family trees, pronunciation guides, etc.

[josiah]

"Unical" he calls it.

Uncial is a family of scripts that are quite old. They actually originate in the eastern, Greek-speaking portion of the Roman empire. Uncial was a strong influence on the insular (i.e., British and Irish) scripts, so today most people think it looks vaguely Celtic. In the particular sample you've linked to, the scribe has added extra dots to the Os, but otherwise it's a pretty straightforward Uncial variant.

 

When I write something in Uncial in my classroom, invariably one of students will comment that it "looks like Lord of the Rings".

 

As I understand, Uncial was a modification of the Roman script (which was still what we'd now describe as all-caps) that had more rounded features and took far less time to write than the more formal Roman script. An eventual descendant of uncial we now call half-uncial was the first letter form to be used in a way that began to resemble a modern minuscule (lowercase), and was one of the models for the Carolingian book hand, which was the branching point for pretty much every modern Latin-based script. A nice summary can be found here: A Brief History of the Alphabet: The Calligraphic Heritage (And, similar, but with better pictures but less description: Initial Research into the History of Type and Lettering)

 

Tolkien used a handwriting that was largely influenced by uncial and Carolingian letters. See a few letters he wrote, or perhaps these little scribbles in his contributions to the OED…or, perhaps best, this poem he wrote for the Lord of the Rings itself. I suspect he was influenced by the calligraphy revival of Edward Johnston, whose "foundational hand" was directly modeled after a Carolingian script written in England in the 9th and 10th centuries, most famously the Ramsey Psalter.

Edited February 6, 2013 by josiah

[josiah]

[oops, double post]

Edited February 6, 2013 by josiah

[FPaholic]

Nice.

[jye]

Thanks all! Yes, did a bit of reading on unical.

 

Those links were AMAZING. Thank you!!! This was one of of the other styles he used on the maps.

 

Thror's Map

[verdiinpink]

I did this one several months ago as a souvenir t-shirt for my flatmate (who obviously is a Tolkien fan).

 

First I write his name in this modified (pseudo-Batarde) tengwar script, scan and then vectorise it.

 

http://i690.photobucket.com/albums/vv263/verdiinpink/SJW-002-LT.jpg