Vince Donovan has been a fan of The Lord of the Rings his entire life, and has a collection of Tolkien memorabilia to prove it. Now he has a proper house to display it! Donovan hired architect Peter Archer to design a Tolkien home with all the right touches.
The walls were set by a stonemason who dug up rocks from the site the house is built on. The timber arches supporting the roof were steamed and bent into a half-circle, then put into place with wooden pegs. The blacksmith made all the door and window hinges with medieval flourishes tapering to little spearponts.
"Everyone got it," said Archer. "They were asking qestions: can we do this, can we step it up to this level? Lot of things they were doing they didn't ask for money. It was amazing how they put their efforts into this project."
One of those craftsman is Matt Harris, a blacksmith in Maryland who made the single most distinctive feature of the cottage — a massive iron hinge that could support a round hobbit door, made of 200 pounds of mahogany, at a single point.
"This project was a lot of fun," said Harris, who is a longtime fan of The Hobbit. "Normally I'm contacted to build gates and railings that are normal — if you will. This work was more fanciful and kind of child-like in keeping with the books and movies."
We first reported on this home five years ago. See a gallery of full-size photographs of this beautiful home at NewsWorks. Link -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Emma Lee/for NewsWorks)