Shire Post
A personal message
from the Webmaster:
Greetings one and all:
My name
is Tom Maringer.
This Shire Post website is my creation. Will Whitfoot is my alter ego,
my Hobbitly personna if you will. Shire Post was started in 1987, and has
evolved into a rather elaborate affair. In my mundane life I am a philatelist
and a professional geographer. I am also an avid reader and am especially
enthusiastic about Professor J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy.
I was always most attracted to the Hobbits and their easy-going attitude
towards life, especially their unquencahble thirst for small news. I thought
it would be fun to try my hand at carving some woodblocks to print some
primitive looking stamps such as might carry the mail in The Shire. Through
my philatelic pursuits I already knew something about early stamp production,
and my
first efforts were a startling
success, at least to me! I shared some of the stamps with some friends,
who were intrigued and asked for more, and then made a wooden postmark
for the town of Hobbiton in the West
Farthing. I also became interested in the art of making paper, and produced
a few complete envelopes that seemed rather authentic-looking and made
great bookmarks for my copy of LOTR. A few others have seen this work...
I made up 350 envelopes with various stamps and postmarks for the Tolkien
Centenary Conference invitations, August 17th-20th 1992, in Oxford England
some years back. (By the way, there exists an exhaustive census of these
Centennial covers... detailing which stamps and what postmarks are represented.
These covers (by the way) were never properly inscribed with dates of mailing
in the Shire Reckoning. If you own one of these and wish it to be completed,
please
let me know ).
After
a while, the vision of what Shire Post could be began to crystallize in
my mind... a real fantasy post office that would move mail though an "interdimensional
rift" and give others the added enjoyment that I was feeling, through handling
physical objects and taking the fantasy to another level.
A major
hurdle was the map. Tolkien's books (I used the Ballantine edition) showed
a map of "Part of The Shire" at rather large scale, but other maps were
of such small scale that The Shire revealed no detail. I scoured the books
and appendices for details, did some tricky scale adjustments, and determined
the overall size of The Shire and the way the detail map fit into it. For
the most part, the missing area was in the South Farthing. If I was going
to provide a postal service to cover the entire area, I would need detail...
far more detail than was available from original sources. I got some expert
advice from professional anthropologist Dr. Robert H. Lafferty on early
settlement patterns, and determined an average town density for the region,
then overlaid a topography. Any town names that were mentioned in the text
but not mapped (like Hardbottle and Sackville) found homes in the new parts.
A few extra names were still needed to fill in the South, and these were
created basically from whole-cloth... but as close to the Hobbit-like mode
of naming as possible... and include Hopsbury, Springdell, Digby, Harcot,
Glen, and Cottonbottom. I ended up with a total of 55
post-offices in The Shire proper and surrounding districts (49 including
the newly registered Tighfield office). I then drew the whole thing out
and inked it by hand. There is a high-resolution copy of the map
on the web-page that you can download and print.
Next,
I had to determine how postage rates would be handled. Since "farthings"
are of-old a quarter penny in Great Britain, it seemed obvious that a farthing
would be the basic local postage rate. Others follow from there. Determining
rates meant thinking about money. The only mentions in the text include
"pennies" and "silver pennies". I determined that 12 pennies would equal
one shilling, which was commonly referred to as a "silver penny". Weights
and measures were never mentioned in the text, so I came up with a simple
system for those, based on the troy ounce. A compilation can be found on
the "Rates and Fees" page, which also shows
the newest stamp issue. Miles and leagues were used interchangeably, but
I found that 40 leagues was equated to 100 miles in the text, so 1 league
equals 2.5 miles!
In June
of 2001 I began to make coins.
The coinage project grew to consume a massive amount of time and resources.
What began as a simply effort to create a few curiosities for my own pleasure
has grown into something of a small enterprise with a shop full of antique
presses and equipment. I had thought that my enthusiasm for fantasy coins
would be mine alone, but it turned out that a number of folks were interested
in obtaining copies of the coins. Unfortunately I was unable to work out
a licensing arrangement with the copyright holder, so all coins and stamps
based on Tolkien themes have been discontinued.
Most
of my time is now spent in the mint making coins for various other fantasy
realms, including the mythology of George
R.R. Martin, King
Arthur's Camelot, Leif
Ericsson's Vinland, colony, Early
French Colonies in North America among others. I've also expanded into
making buttons (as in clothing buttons for costumers) and solid forged
copper cabinet knobs, hinges, and catches.
We started
with the idea of moving mail decorated with Shire postmarks and addresses.
The participation level has always been low on such esoterica, but other
aspects of wood, paper, and metal craft have tended to take over. We hope
you enjoy what you see!
Kindest
regards:
Tom Maringer
Shire Post
2692 Powell Street
Springdale, AR 72764
USA
http://www.shirepost.com
contact: maringer@arkansas.net
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