It all started when I was in college. During spring break of my last semester, all my house mates, and most of my friends left campus, but since I went to school almost 2,000 miles from my home town, I stayed on campus. I had unlimited access to the ceramics studio in the art department, so I spent most of the week there. Late in the week, a friend from back home called me. I was pulling handles for mugs, but I turned off my wheel, wiped my hands off, and sat out in the art building hallway and chatted with her for about an hour. In the course of the conversation, I mentioned that in the last three days I had made nine mugs. With nothing else to do, I was feeling pretty productive. My friend mused quietly, "Nine mugs for mortal men." There was a long silence in which my mind traveled to Middle Earth and back. "Oh, NO! Now I have to make nine more! I need to make a mug for every member of the nine walkers. A Frodo mug, and a Strider mug... the hobbits could have round comfy mugs, and the Gandalf's would be tall and have some fire in it and Strider could have a tree on his..."

Spring break was over. But I spent every spare moment for the rest of the semester thinking about, drawing, and attempting to make Fellowship mugs. I tried a lot of things. I looked at the mugs that Peter Jackson used in various scenes of the movies (the scene in the Shire at the end of Return of the King. The mugs the hobbits drink out of at the Green Dragon are beautiful). I read and reread lots of passages of description of land and characters. I decided that I wanted my hobbit mugs to have added feet without glaze. I left the very first hobbit mugs (looking very different than they do now,) with a few good friends. And I left the prototype Strider mug with one of my favorite professors.

After graduation, there was lots of stress and job searching. But as soon as I was gainfully employed in my home town, I joined the local potters guild and started working out the bugs in my Hobbit Mug design. A ceramic artist always has to deal with the problem of having too many mugs, and not enough room in her cupboards, or in any of her friends' cupboards. Like Tolkien's dwarves, I delight in the act of making things far more than the possession. I joined Etsy the following spring with the hope that there were other people out in the wide world that were as fond of Tolkien and handmade ceramics as I am of making Tolkien inspired ceramics.