Galadriel's Weavers and Glorious Glimpses in The Lord of the Rings

As readers, we never get to climb a flet in Lothlórien to see Galadriel and her weavers crafting the grey cloth of which they make their enchanted cloaks and the glimmering hithlain rope that comes to the aid of the Fellowship, but we know such a place exists and that such activities are happening there. This is one of those glorious glimpses J.R.R. Tolkien gives us into the richness and depth of Middle-earth that turn sketches into detailed pictures of life, customs, cultures, and landscapes. A deep reading is rewarded by so much beauty and wonder; in fact, sometimes the greatest loveliness is on the borders of the main narratives of Tolkien's tales.

In The Lord of the Rings, Legolas regrets that it isn't spring when the Fellowship turns toward the Golden Wood. I think Tolkien may have regretted it, too, because he wanted us to know about Lothlórien, not just in the autumn with its golden and silver leaves, but also in springtime when the mellyrn have green and silver foliage and golden flowers. In addition to drawing the place for us, Tolkien lets Legolas fill in blanks so that we readers get to see what the Fellowship misses. What an adept world-building technique! My hope with this new painting was to offer a further glimpse that is there on the margin of the tales and is so beautiful that it deserves to be seen. Can you imagine actually getting to witness such a scene?

Tall, powerful Galadriel stands at center, and I hope you can see in her strength and stature the cause of her mother calling her Nerwen, meaning "Man-maiden". She is a figure of awe, but she is also a deeply aesthetic being, using the power of her ring to create a kind of artists' colony in the Golden Wood where beauty is protected and preserved. She walks gracefully amongst her weaving maidens, some of whom weave the grey cloth, while others are drying a delicate, gauzy fabric for elven attire, and still others are processing great twists of the fibers that will eventually be refined into hithlain rope. One maiden in the background weaves green cloth, which I thought might be a gift for Galadriel's granddaughter, Arwen, to be sent to Rivendell.

A harper is perched in the branches of this mallorn, bringing gentle music to the scene. Perhaps the weavers might sing at their work at times, given elven love of song. As with all of my paintings, it is very important to me that each of the elves looks like an individual, rather than as if they are homogenous people in uniform. Each maiden shows her own taste in dress and the arrangement of her hair. We do not know any of the weavers' names, but we know they existed, and each would have had her own story.

Fine and joyful details

The most interesting "other minds and hands" challenge in this painting for me was to think about the technical details of elven weaving. I had studied a number of ancient looms, but I finally felt ready to begin on the painting when the thought suddenly came to me that the Galadhrim might actually string their warp threads through the branches of the trees they loved so much, making the mellyrn a part of the weaving and perhaps adding some special virtue to their textiles. This is entirely my own idea, but when it occurred to me, it somehow felt satisfying to me, based on my understanding of this people.

The most joyous aspect of this artwork was that I was able to paint the trees during the time of their green leaves and golden flowers. Interestingly, as I am writing this blog post, I've just been attending Luke Shelton's Westmoot presentation on whether readers interpret Tolkien's description of the mellyrn as metaphorical or literal (e.g. are their leaves and bark really yellow and grey or are they actually like gold and silver metals). This is a subject on which I have thought so much. My own opinion is that the trees are natural, but that there are many primary world trees with extremely shiny leaves (like holly) and metallic-looking bark (like some species of cherry, though you must imagine the bark silver and smooth instead of red and scored). And, of course, leaf shape is best drawn from the beech, as Tolkien explained. The sum of this variety of thoughts has guided my own depictions of Lothlórien, but when it came to the flowers, I had to do so much research before I found a real-world analogue, based on Tolkien's own artwork, that satisfied me.

At long last, I found Tabebuia aurea with its stunning clusters of golden flowers that look very like the ones Tolkien drew in colored pencil. It was an absolute delight to me to closely examine these blooms and to take them into account in painting mallorn flowers for the first time.

The whole process of trying to really see the Golden Wood as Tolkien describes and portrays it seems to me to require the ability to pull together a variety of fine details from the natural world he observed so meticulously and loved so well.

In sum, I think a close picture of the mallorn can be had if we think of the bark of a cherry, but silver, the leaves of a beech but longer and as shiny as holly and with the bi-colored effect one sees on Populus alba, and the flowers of the Tabebuia aurea. I so wish I could talk all this over with the Professor, but at least we have the glorious glimpses he left us of weavers so skilled that their work was like magic, dwelling amid trees that are like the essence of many forests distilled into a single species. Enchanting!

And I hope you will feel the enchantment of this scene in this video short. I have made a special effort to photograph this particular painting as it developed, in case you would like to see how I paint from Tolkien's works. A deep reading is, indeed, rewarding.