Middle Earth Ranger Forum

So - a little follow-up to this saga!
Yesterday I was talking to a woman who is a really talented jeweler and smith who also does 14th century reenactment, who recently made some really beautiful buckles for me which I intended to use on my new quiver (I ended up only using one of the three, but that’s another story). She runs a business called Handmade Revolution, through which she sells on Etsy and also her own website. Anyway, it occurred to me as we were talking that she could probably make a GORGEOUS Dúnedain star brooch, so I asked if she would ever consider it, and she expressed a LOT of interest! She told me to let folks in the community know that she would love to talk to them about designing one and offering it through her shop, but it helps if she has at least one confirmed customer to get the ball rolling, since it’s a custom design. I asked her what her ballpark price would be for something like that, and she said probably somewhere around the $70 range, give or take (I believe that’s Canadian dollars), for a brooch made of brass and plated in silver. Solid silver would be significantly more, but the plated option would be very budget-friendly!
Anyway, just thought folks here should know! Hit her up if you’re interested! And check out her FB page to see some of her really beautiful historical pieces and jewelry work! She has also participated with the Rangers of the North group that some of you may have seen on Facebook and Instagram.

Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/HandmadeRevolutionTO

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/handmaderevolutionTO/

Website: https://www.handmaderevolution.org/

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Just to pop in and add an update, but the above mentioned maker - Aurora at HandMadeRevolution - is indeed now working on a star brooch for the Ranger community. Final designs should be shared in about a week, I'm told.

I am SUPER excited for her version! Can’t wait to see it! I’m probably going to have to get one for myself, just to have an extra, and probably to wear when out doing things where I might be afraid of damaging or losing my other one.

Pretty stoked, myself. Waiting is hard!!

Just placed my pre-order!

For reference sake, this is her version. I just might pick one up. Looks nice.

I was excited to see her post about it over in the Facebook group! I still prefer a base-4 design rather than a base-6 design for the star, but technically 12 is still divisible by 4, and this does a nice job of combining the two so that it doesn’t look too much like a compass star. In the end, it looks very nice! If I had my druthers I might have also liked the circle to be placed behind the rays, and slightly inside so the very ends of the tips poked out slightly, which would help establish the silhouette as a star rather than a circle, but beggars can’t be choosers, and she has done some very lovely work here. I’m pretty broke at the moment but I’m very tempted to snag one before the presale is over.

Just placed my pre-order. It was cheaper than expected due to the low CAD to USD exchange at the moment. Still looking forward to Caedmon's version but it will be good to have some variety.

Resurrecting this thread once again for a bit of a tangent…

I’ve started watching the second season of the Witcher on Netflix, and so far I have been much more satisfied with this season than the first. I was not a fan of season 1, particularly in terms of the costumes, props, sets, and visual effects. The story also seemed extremely scattershot and difficult to follow, even compared to the short-story anthology books it was largely based on, which also did a lot of time-jumping and so forth, but still managed to be less confusing than the show. This season seems to have made a lot of improvements over the first, but I’m only a couple episodes in so far, so we’ll see how it plays out. The show definitely seems polarizing, and while I know a number of people who, like me, were not fans, I also know many who absolutely LOVED it right from the outset, so… y’know, your mileage may vary.

But that’s not really the point.

For those unfamiliar with this universe, witchers wear silver medallions signifying their school or order, and these medallions carry certain magical properties. In the middle of the great hall of the Witcher stronghold of Kaer Morhen there is a large tree, and on it are hung many different medallions that belonged to fallen witchers. What struck me about it is that, if you look closely, you can see that every single medallion is DISTINCTLY different! They’re all recognizable in form, and you can tell that they’re all meant to convey the same idea of a wolf’s head - but no two are exactly alike, as if they have all been made by different craftspeople over the years with different interpretations of the same concept.

This, of course, led me to thinking about our discussion of the Star of the Dúnedain, and how it makes a lot of sense that these brooches, while necessarily similar to one another and immediately recognizable, may yet be of vastly different make and design.

Anyway, I just thought this was a great little detail that showed an attention to detail that really enriched the universe they’re attempting to adapt to the screen, and it seemed applicable to this discussion.

I thought the same thing!

As I've said in a different thread, total uniformity is a product of an industrial age.
Several people have posted their Ranger stars and in my mind its obvious what they are, even if no two are exactly the same.