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Tolkien Tapestry: Pictures to Accompany the Lord of the Rings
This full-colour art book reveals in sumptuous detail more than 100 paintings based on The Lord of the Rings by acclaimed Dutch artist, Cor Blok, many of which appear here for the first time.
160 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 14, 2015
This is a book I read because of my dissertation and yet I had never heard of it before starting to research books and artwork associated with LotR. I am very glad that I ended up picking this up though because I actually really enjoyed it. It's essentially a book which details some of the ideas behind Cor Blok's (the artist) Tolkien Inspired artworks which are modelled and crafted to look like older tapestry/cave painting images.
The things I really enjoyed about this were that Blok himself actually has a rather long foreword where he describes why the book was put together and the way that he approached the project of creating images based on LotR and I found this fascinating. If you don't have a lot of interest in art or art history/art practises you'll probably not like it to the level that I did, but it was very interesting to get first hand insight into why Blok made the choices he did.
Some of the images are very beautiful and although the technique is highly stylised and simplified it really gets to the essence of the image quickly. I found myself drawn into looking at the art pieces and finding out who was who and exactly what it was representing. I think his depiction of Gollum (although very different from the later film version) was really great, and the same can be said of his version of the Ents and Strider. I definitely loved the bigger panel designs which recounted landscapes and battles too. All very considered and quirky.
On the whole this is a really great look at how the Tolkien stories mean something different to everyone and how, because they are fantasy, they can be depicted in such a range of ways. This looks in detail at Blok, but has some great comments on other artists and design choices too and it was a thoroughly interesting read :) 4*s
The things I really enjoyed about this were that Blok himself actually has a rather long foreword where he describes why the book was put together and the way that he approached the project of creating images based on LotR and I found this fascinating. If you don't have a lot of interest in art or art history/art practises you'll probably not like it to the level that I did, but it was very interesting to get first hand insight into why Blok made the choices he did.
Some of the images are very beautiful and although the technique is highly stylised and simplified it really gets to the essence of the image quickly. I found myself drawn into looking at the art pieces and finding out who was who and exactly what it was representing. I think his depiction of Gollum (although very different from the later film version) was really great, and the same can be said of his version of the Ents and Strider. I definitely loved the bigger panel designs which recounted landscapes and battles too. All very considered and quirky.
On the whole this is a really great look at how the Tolkien stories mean something different to everyone and how, because they are fantasy, they can be depicted in such a range of ways. This looks in detail at Blok, but has some great comments on other artists and design choices too and it was a thoroughly interesting read :) 4*s
February 23, 2022
A unique take on Middle Earth - otherworldly, and occasionally brilliant.
As a body of work, Cor Blok's Tolkien Tapestry, gathered together here for the first time, in its most complete (120 of the 140 works Blok created) and well-printed manifestation ever, is intriguing, perplexing, sometimes dissatisfying, and occasionally brilliant. I'm really glad Harper Collins put this book out, allowing us to really get to grips with this until now elusive interpreter of Tolkien's bestselling masterpiece. Can I recommend it? Well, not without circumspection, and a few provisos. So, here goes.
If I'm completely candid, I was a little disappointed: the book is beautifully printed, and Blok's introductory essay is well written and illuminating, but the art is not of a consistent standard, as Blok himself admits. Tolkien and Blok corresponded, even meeting at one point, and Tolkien liked Blok's work enough to consider him for a mooted illustrated edition of LOTR, even buying a couple of his pieces. Like Tolkien, one of my favourites, and amongst those he bought, is the 'Battle Of The Hornburg'. And, again like Tolkien, I wish that more of Blok's other work were of this type and standard.
One of Blok's main artistic ploys is to leave out as much as detail as he can, both in terms of character and context. The idea - that this leaves more room for the viewer's imagination - is good, but it doesn't always work. It's true that the great beauty of the written word is that it does leave such an imaginative space, but pictures step boldly into that very gap. Blok seems to want to avoid that somehow.
Personally I think some of his best works are those in which he throws out this minimalist concept, such as 'Frodo's Vision On Amon Hen', or 'The Battle Of The Hornburg'. These paintings are full of detail and action, the settings figuring in a role at least as dramatic as those of the tiny figures themselves. This approach fits the grand narrative sweep of Tolkien's world. And in fact Blok himself observes that "landscape with Tolkien serves not merely as a backdrop to the action: it contributes greatly to the atmosphere". Whereas some of his art more consistent with his minimalist concepts, for example 'The Game Of Riddles', or 'The Cow Jumped Over The Moon', are less successful.
I'm not always overly keen on how he handles figures either. Again, the idea of 'less is more' is great in theory, but I just don't always like how he's actually done it (his beaky Gollum being a case in point). This said, there are occasions where his stripped down approach does work remarkably well, for instance in 'Gandalf Relates His Adventures'. In fact there are even instances where it works better the more abstract his figures are: such as his final LOTR piece, 'The King Of The Nazgul', which is like a hyper minimalist de Kooning, far better and more sinister than his earlier painting, 'The Sorcerer King', which looks more ridiculous than ominous. But, whether you like Blok's stylistic ideas or not, undoubtedly one of his strengths is how he differs from more conventional fantasy artists.
Occasionally he departs from Tolkien's narrative 'facts', as in 'Slaying Of The Nazgul', where he depicts Eowyn with a spear rather than a sword. This seems like an instance of justifiable artistic license, as it creates compositional drama. But when, in his second version of 'The Hobbits Sacking Bilbo's House', he has stairs to a second floor... Sorry, but that's just wrong! Remember the description of Bilbo's home in The Hobbit: "no going upstairs for the hobbit"!
Despite the above criticisms and a degree of disappointment, this is still a handsome book, reproducing very finely some interesting and occasionally highly successful art, and Blok's work remains unique as an interpretation of Tolkien's monumental act of creation. There are many delightfully atmospheric pieces here, such as the favourites I already knew of, like 'Amon Hen' and the 'Hornburg', but there are also the previously unpublished 'Weathertop', 'The Last Bridge', 'Country Of The Trolls', 'The Petrified Trolls', and the darkly moody 'Legolas Shoots The Nazgul Down', all of which depict larger scenes including more landscape and context.
Even some of the more minimalist figure based paintings work very well, for example 'The Firework Dragon II', 'Gandalf Persuades Bilbo', 'Caradhras', and the very evocative and highly stylized 'The Crebain'. And there are a significant number of more satisfying artworks where Blok mixes his minimal figure-centred style with the larger landscape inclusive approach, as in 'The Company Attacked By Wolves', 'Descent of Emyn Muil', 'Journey On The Anduin', 'Gollum's Promise', and 'Stewed Rabbit'.
So, is it worth buying? In my view, if you're a Tolkien nut, and open-minded and eclectic in relation to art, then yes, I think it is, and I would recommend it.
As a body of work, Cor Blok's Tolkien Tapestry, gathered together here for the first time, in its most complete (120 of the 140 works Blok created) and well-printed manifestation ever, is intriguing, perplexing, sometimes dissatisfying, and occasionally brilliant. I'm really glad Harper Collins put this book out, allowing us to really get to grips with this until now elusive interpreter of Tolkien's bestselling masterpiece. Can I recommend it? Well, not without circumspection, and a few provisos. So, here goes.
If I'm completely candid, I was a little disappointed: the book is beautifully printed, and Blok's introductory essay is well written and illuminating, but the art is not of a consistent standard, as Blok himself admits. Tolkien and Blok corresponded, even meeting at one point, and Tolkien liked Blok's work enough to consider him for a mooted illustrated edition of LOTR, even buying a couple of his pieces. Like Tolkien, one of my favourites, and amongst those he bought, is the 'Battle Of The Hornburg'. And, again like Tolkien, I wish that more of Blok's other work were of this type and standard.
One of Blok's main artistic ploys is to leave out as much as detail as he can, both in terms of character and context. The idea - that this leaves more room for the viewer's imagination - is good, but it doesn't always work. It's true that the great beauty of the written word is that it does leave such an imaginative space, but pictures step boldly into that very gap. Blok seems to want to avoid that somehow.
Personally I think some of his best works are those in which he throws out this minimalist concept, such as 'Frodo's Vision On Amon Hen', or 'The Battle Of The Hornburg'. These paintings are full of detail and action, the settings figuring in a role at least as dramatic as those of the tiny figures themselves. This approach fits the grand narrative sweep of Tolkien's world. And in fact Blok himself observes that "landscape with Tolkien serves not merely as a backdrop to the action: it contributes greatly to the atmosphere". Whereas some of his art more consistent with his minimalist concepts, for example 'The Game Of Riddles', or 'The Cow Jumped Over The Moon', are less successful.
I'm not always overly keen on how he handles figures either. Again, the idea of 'less is more' is great in theory, but I just don't always like how he's actually done it (his beaky Gollum being a case in point). This said, there are occasions where his stripped down approach does work remarkably well, for instance in 'Gandalf Relates His Adventures'. In fact there are even instances where it works better the more abstract his figures are: such as his final LOTR piece, 'The King Of The Nazgul', which is like a hyper minimalist de Kooning, far better and more sinister than his earlier painting, 'The Sorcerer King', which looks more ridiculous than ominous. But, whether you like Blok's stylistic ideas or not, undoubtedly one of his strengths is how he differs from more conventional fantasy artists.
Occasionally he departs from Tolkien's narrative 'facts', as in 'Slaying Of The Nazgul', where he depicts Eowyn with a spear rather than a sword. This seems like an instance of justifiable artistic license, as it creates compositional drama. But when, in his second version of 'The Hobbits Sacking Bilbo's House', he has stairs to a second floor... Sorry, but that's just wrong! Remember the description of Bilbo's home in The Hobbit: "no going upstairs for the hobbit"!
Despite the above criticisms and a degree of disappointment, this is still a handsome book, reproducing very finely some interesting and occasionally highly successful art, and Blok's work remains unique as an interpretation of Tolkien's monumental act of creation. There are many delightfully atmospheric pieces here, such as the favourites I already knew of, like 'Amon Hen' and the 'Hornburg', but there are also the previously unpublished 'Weathertop', 'The Last Bridge', 'Country Of The Trolls', 'The Petrified Trolls', and the darkly moody 'Legolas Shoots The Nazgul Down', all of which depict larger scenes including more landscape and context.
Even some of the more minimalist figure based paintings work very well, for example 'The Firework Dragon II', 'Gandalf Persuades Bilbo', 'Caradhras', and the very evocative and highly stylized 'The Crebain'. And there are a significant number of more satisfying artworks where Blok mixes his minimal figure-centred style with the larger landscape inclusive approach, as in 'The Company Attacked By Wolves', 'Descent of Emyn Muil', 'Journey On The Anduin', 'Gollum's Promise', and 'Stewed Rabbit'.
So, is it worth buying? In my view, if you're a Tolkien nut, and open-minded and eclectic in relation to art, then yes, I think it is, and I would recommend it.
January 16, 2012
Apart from some of the pictures being rather small, I was delighted to have Blok's work in one book - many that I hadn't seen before.
March 31, 2026
Lo siento, @Blanca Torroja Soto, este también es 4⭐️
April 9, 2026
Admittedly, I've only so far seen this via an Internet Archive borrow so I cannot critique the print quality or intended layout. But peering online at this which I'd never heard of before browsing on the Tolkien Gateway site for alternatives to Alan Lee/ John Howe illustrations which dominate the visions of those whose images have been irrevocably influenced by Peter Jackson's films, I confess I came to like Cor Blok's gouache versions. After all, Tolkien approved of what he saw in 1961 and even bought two. Blok's signature efforts soon graced the fronts of LotR translations in his native Netherlands.
They reminded me of the rather awkward and stilted depictions from where I first was exposed to the opening chapter of the Hobbit as a child around 1969. Back then of course we curious readers had only a few inclusions from the Professor's pen in the edition available, and depended on our imaginations.
I didn't like Robert J. Lee's to me Mary Poppins-ish caricatures in that initial JRRT excerpt within the estimable and endlessly engrossing Golden Treasury of Children's Literature compiled by Bryna + Louis Untermeyer (although it as a deep wonder-trove, and its inviting companions of Poetry, of Myths + Legends, and the Canterbury Tales, powerfully shaped my psyche and in hindsight these handsome anthologies from the high-quality Golden Books line, hard to imagine in our diminished days of sensitivity gatekeepers any equals, likely guided me towards Blok over half-a-century later as I drift back to Tolkien for hard-won wisdom as well as escape), so I put off continuing the tale until two years later at the urging of two savvy fifth-grade bookworm pals. I hadn't cared for Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea, CS Lewis' Narnia did nothing, and no Roald Dahl came my way beyond a Giant Peach.
(I'm unsure if my classmates admired Maurice Sendak, Shel Silverstein, or Jules Feiffer, New York's peers--and similarly brainy, prodigal challengers in wit and grit to the prejudices against what was still the side gig of Young Adult markets--to Blok, but I wouldn't have followed their efforts as I'd steered clear of Dr Seuss and Dr Doolittle, and veered away towards "classics" from Sixties bestsellers, with the exception of Norton Juster's clever The Phantom Tollbooth sharpened by Feiffer's deft nib.)
Point being in autodidatic retrospect I now find allusions to Klee, Bacon, Kandinsky, Chagall, Picasso, Dali, and Mondrian as appealing as nods to a Bayeux Tapestry; Bosch; Persian, Minoan or Byzantine iconography; Brueghel; pre-Columbian and post-Conquest Latin American pictorial chronicles; cave paintings; medieval marginalia, and Eastern European or Asian folklore murals. For context, I admire Stanley Spencer, the Beatus Liebana Spanish apocalypse, Eric Gill, and Pauline Baynes in their distorted faces and irritated linear insights into spiritual unrest and bestial invasion. I may be mistaken in my amateur comparisons, but I think the "Barbarusia" imaginarium envisioned by Blok as a Dada-inspired installation of a culture from Paleolithic to contemporary eras around the early 1960s (wish it had been memorialized on film and then archived; similarly, some pieces in the Tolkien series were destroyed by the finicky or willful Dutch creator, or sold before he photographed them) matches his quirky, eerie, paganish, raw approach. The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander were marketed in this style on their covers, probably cashing in on the look of gauche hippie-Gothic hued Ballantine boxed LotR paperbacks I saved up for. (Tellingly, in the air of certain of RJ Lee's whimsical Golden Press contributors, reminiscent in their bold angles and blunt grins, tilted postures and gnomish grimaces: Blok's stark patterns of jarring or sly characters overlay subdued backgrounds akin to animation cels from postwar media.) Their lysergic landscapes for all their misplaced fantasy marked deep on my mindset. They first delayed and then accelerated my entry into Middle-earth.
Blok spends space in this slim volume on his coming into the project and he accounts for his theories and exhibitions. Luckily some errant entries in private hands were able to be retrieved before their innovator died a decade after this compendium of 120 of the 140 works came out in 2011. Sebastian Palmer's** fine review preceded mine on Goodreads, so I defer to his comments for details. I agree with Palmer as to the substandard reproduction of certain installments, the "beaky Gollum" (JRRT had apt reservations about Blok's original and incorrect rendering of the doomed creature), and the publication's overall aims. I wish more of the art had been larger and reducing so much into small squares and rectangles appears odd but perhaps varied size intends to recreate differences in scale which Blok intended, favoring the minimalism which later interpreters of the visual Middle-earth appear to have rejected or ignored {**https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...}
For me, this preference for the harsh, jagged, perpendicular, skewed, and nightmarish emphasizes the terrain of the lands and the fright which dominated rather than airbrushed beauty and maximal panoramas colored by cinema, gaming and inevitably digital and CGI tools. As I come from the grey generation born ar0und the time of the exchanges between Blok and Tolkien, I welcome the shift back to a primal, primitive, and unadorned encounter with unsettling and hallucinatory scenery. And it's important as Blok noted in an interview with Pieter Collier how JRRT preferred decoupling his vivid narratives from even his own visualization of his legendarium, enabling our "mind's eye" to expand.
They reminded me of the rather awkward and stilted depictions from where I first was exposed to the opening chapter of the Hobbit as a child around 1969. Back then of course we curious readers had only a few inclusions from the Professor's pen in the edition available, and depended on our imaginations.
I didn't like Robert J. Lee's to me Mary Poppins-ish caricatures in that initial JRRT excerpt within the estimable and endlessly engrossing Golden Treasury of Children's Literature compiled by Bryna + Louis Untermeyer (although it as a deep wonder-trove, and its inviting companions of Poetry, of Myths + Legends, and the Canterbury Tales, powerfully shaped my psyche and in hindsight these handsome anthologies from the high-quality Golden Books line, hard to imagine in our diminished days of sensitivity gatekeepers any equals, likely guided me towards Blok over half-a-century later as I drift back to Tolkien for hard-won wisdom as well as escape), so I put off continuing the tale until two years later at the urging of two savvy fifth-grade bookworm pals. I hadn't cared for Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea, CS Lewis' Narnia did nothing, and no Roald Dahl came my way beyond a Giant Peach.
(I'm unsure if my classmates admired Maurice Sendak, Shel Silverstein, or Jules Feiffer, New York's peers--and similarly brainy, prodigal challengers in wit and grit to the prejudices against what was still the side gig of Young Adult markets--to Blok, but I wouldn't have followed their efforts as I'd steered clear of Dr Seuss and Dr Doolittle, and veered away towards "classics" from Sixties bestsellers, with the exception of Norton Juster's clever The Phantom Tollbooth sharpened by Feiffer's deft nib.)
Point being in autodidatic retrospect I now find allusions to Klee, Bacon, Kandinsky, Chagall, Picasso, Dali, and Mondrian as appealing as nods to a Bayeux Tapestry; Bosch; Persian, Minoan or Byzantine iconography; Brueghel; pre-Columbian and post-Conquest Latin American pictorial chronicles; cave paintings; medieval marginalia, and Eastern European or Asian folklore murals. For context, I admire Stanley Spencer, the Beatus Liebana Spanish apocalypse, Eric Gill, and Pauline Baynes in their distorted faces and irritated linear insights into spiritual unrest and bestial invasion. I may be mistaken in my amateur comparisons, but I think the "Barbarusia" imaginarium envisioned by Blok as a Dada-inspired installation of a culture from Paleolithic to contemporary eras around the early 1960s (wish it had been memorialized on film and then archived; similarly, some pieces in the Tolkien series were destroyed by the finicky or willful Dutch creator, or sold before he photographed them) matches his quirky, eerie, paganish, raw approach. The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander were marketed in this style on their covers, probably cashing in on the look of gauche hippie-Gothic hued Ballantine boxed LotR paperbacks I saved up for. (Tellingly, in the air of certain of RJ Lee's whimsical Golden Press contributors, reminiscent in their bold angles and blunt grins, tilted postures and gnomish grimaces: Blok's stark patterns of jarring or sly characters overlay subdued backgrounds akin to animation cels from postwar media.) Their lysergic landscapes for all their misplaced fantasy marked deep on my mindset. They first delayed and then accelerated my entry into Middle-earth.
Blok spends space in this slim volume on his coming into the project and he accounts for his theories and exhibitions. Luckily some errant entries in private hands were able to be retrieved before their innovator died a decade after this compendium of 120 of the 140 works came out in 2011. Sebastian Palmer's** fine review preceded mine on Goodreads, so I defer to his comments for details. I agree with Palmer as to the substandard reproduction of certain installments, the "beaky Gollum" (JRRT had apt reservations about Blok's original and incorrect rendering of the doomed creature), and the publication's overall aims. I wish more of the art had been larger and reducing so much into small squares and rectangles appears odd but perhaps varied size intends to recreate differences in scale which Blok intended, favoring the minimalism which later interpreters of the visual Middle-earth appear to have rejected or ignored {**https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...}
For me, this preference for the harsh, jagged, perpendicular, skewed, and nightmarish emphasizes the terrain of the lands and the fright which dominated rather than airbrushed beauty and maximal panoramas colored by cinema, gaming and inevitably digital and CGI tools. As I come from the grey generation born ar0und the time of the exchanges between Blok and Tolkien, I welcome the shift back to a primal, primitive, and unadorned encounter with unsettling and hallucinatory scenery. And it's important as Blok noted in an interview with Pieter Collier how JRRT preferred decoupling his vivid narratives from even his own visualization of his legendarium, enabling our "mind's eye" to expand.
December 17, 2023
Blok's style deviates considerably from other Tolkien illustrators. I remember his illustrating the 2011 and 2012 Tolkien calenders and not really liking them. Having read Blok's explanation in this volume and looking more carefully at his art work, the pictures are much more appealing when taken into context. They are very 1960s and more appreciated. While I do prefer the illustrations of Pauline Baines and others, Blok's are a good alternative and are really very good - JRRT liked them enough to purchase two. Well worth a look.
August 4, 2026
A necessary work to wash your eyes from the same old stuff that's trying to imitate the classical illustrators (without, of course, getting there).
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