The Tolkien Society of Kansas City

At the recent February meeting, we discussed the final chapter of The Hobbit, which is chapter 19 as well as The Quest for Erebor. We'll be holding our next meeting on Wednesday, March 26, at Cardboard Corner Cafe, at 9240 Metcalf Ave, Overland Park, KS.  We'll be in the Fantasy room.  We'll be discussing Tolkien's translation of  Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,  an Arthurian tale translated from the Middle English. Also, our Soundscape sample has had to be postponed several times, and is still upcoming on Monday, March 10, at 6:30 PM, in the Party Tree channel of our Discord server, in conjunction with our Hobbit Happy Hour.

As many of you may know, I am a bookbinder doing primarily restoration work. A couple of years ago, one of my clients asked me if I could rebind his first edition, first printing set of The Lord of the Rings into a leather binding? I replied that his idea looked like an interesting project and said "yes". He sent me the 3 books along with the endpapers and headbands he wanted to use on the books and I would order the leather that had to be shipped from the UK. The books as they arrived: The first step was to strip the old cloth covers off and then with any corrective issues with the book boards.  The spines for each book had to be cleaned of their old material and new material applied. The 3 books ready for the new leather covers: The leather was measured for each book and then trimmed around the edges for the turn-ins when eventually put on the book. The 3 new leather covers were sent out to have a custom gold stamped design on each book spine and then the covers were re...