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Museum-Quality Matte Paper Print available in two sizes:
12" x 16" (30cm x 40cm): $35.00
24" x 32" (60cm x 80cm): $48.00
 
“1432: Meriadoc, called the Magnificent, becomes Master of Buckland. Great gifts are sent to him by King Éomer and the Lady Éowyn of Ithilien.” - Appendix B to The Lord of the Rings
 
Meriadoc Brandybuck has been the Master of Brandy Hall and Buckland for eight years in this scene set in S.R. 1440. He and his wife, Estella, have invited their cousins to come over from the Tookland for a summer visit. Pippin, Diamond, and their little son, Faramir, enjoy first breakfast in the private family dining room overlooking the Brandywine River.
 
We never learn the name of Merry's son (who is helping himself to scrumptious things from the sideboard) but there are so many clues to his culture and life in this painting. Things to notice:
 
- Brandy Hall was teeming with family, so here, the Master has a private breakfast room to start the day with his family and a little peace and quiet.
- Brandy Hall has 100 windows and lots of doors, including three main front doors; because hobbits don't sleep upstairs, I suppose that bedrooms occupied much of the first floor, and that this breakfast room is upstairs, overlooking early risers boating on the Brandywine River
- Estella wears a green bayan and Diamond a mustard-colored one.
- The great earthenware vessel with the horsehead motif is one of the gifts sent to Merry from Rohan
- The riparian habitat of Buckland is reflected in the water plant and trout motifs in the luxuriant carpet, the designs on the pottery, the wading bird candelabra, and the dried rushes.
- Merry's book, Herblore of the Shire, is on the foreground table, with an illustration of pipe-weed on its cover.
- The beautiful tapestry on the wall is one that Merry commissioned, and it is a reflection of the fact that he learned to follow Treebeard's commandment to "Learn the lore of living creatures" when in Fangorn during the War of the Ring. I drew inspiration for this wall hanging from a mural painted in a mountain lodge by Robert Boardman Howard around the time that J.R.R. Tolkien published The Hobbit. 
 
I love the Brandybucks, and think they show us the apex of hobbit gentility, with their huge hall, their astounding courage of visiting the Old Forest from time to time, and the names Professor Tolkien chose for them which are reminiscent of Celtic heroes. No wonder this young Master was known as Meriadoc the Magnficent!
 
By hanging a museum-quality print of this original, hand-done painting in your, you, too, can be the guest of Brandy Hall, in a time of peace which its Master and his friends sacrificed so much to win for their homeland.