Middle Earth Ranger Forum

There's a second datapoint that suggests Gondor definitely has silk: the poem 'The Man In the Moon Came Down Too Soon' has an innkeeper in Dol Amroth who knows of silk but says he doesn’t own any; paired with its usage in the King's Letter, that suggests it's for upperclass folks. As for where it's coming from, your hypotheses are as good as mine.

Elleth wrote: ↑Mon Jan 24, 2022 12:26 am Now I'm curious where it's coming from - if one took the strictest reading of the silk kerchiefs exchange (Bilbo's were linen, Elrond's were silk) - then coming down the Great East Road from points east after the Battle of Five Armies, reclamation of Dale, etc opened trade over the Misty Mountains again. But that seems a bit overly complicated. Likewise I don't know how much trade we can infer from Lindon or Rivendell, and the Greenway isn't much travelled, so....

I've always taken the silk reference as a way for Tolkien to show that Bilbo was wealthy, having silk fabric has always been a sign of wealth. it could be cultivated in the Shire, but if that were the case it would probably be more common among other hobbits than it is, my guess would be that it would be from a trade route from some place far away, making it more of an unusual and less common place item, just a guess tho

Iodo wrote: ↑Mon Jan 24, 2022 12:59 pm I've always taken the silk reference as a way for Tolkien to show that Bilbo was wealthy,

I recently re-read the hobbit and was struck by the fact that I had never once questioned how the economy of the shire works. Obviously after his adventure he has much wealth but before that Bilbo is quite well to do without doing anything!

So I got the Andy Serkis audiobook, 100/10 recommend if you haven’t listened to them, and somehow when I originally read and reread the fellowship I completely missed the whole “prologue” where Tolkien talks about the Shire, in that he mentions how most of the hobbits are relatively insular in economy, where they provide most of their own food and necessities, so a large family, like the baggins’, could grow in wealth by that nature.

Yeah, I don't think there's a coherent system of 'what goods are available in the Shire' because it's more vibes based than logic based - they have access to the goods of the British empire at its height, but conveniently without empire lol, except not everything! So they have tea, coffee, silk, sugar, and potatoes (and maybe tomatoes), but no cotton, squash, or maize.

Interestingly, Tom bombadil has scarlet runners, an heirloom variety of runner beans that his been cultivated in England since the 16th century - but not before then, because it's definitely a new world bean.

My "suggestions" would be that the silks spoken of is Sea-silk harvested by the Lindon Elves and later sold to the dwarves.