Help wanted - Ideas for a "Elvish" commission....
 

I found out today that the pottery teacher at my current work place, has made a beautiful bowl for Jewish friends inscribed in Hebrew with the traditional prayer for the washing of hands .. I jokingly asked her if she could do one in Elvish but I am hoping to persuade her for real .... the only hitch is that I am only a temp and opportunity may not coincide with inspiration - so does anyone have any ideas mainly for the inscription - her style of pottery wouldn't look too out of place in Rivendell....... :)

One of my favorite lines in LotR is "We put the thought of all that we love into all that we make". It seems very appropriate for a handcrafted project; however, I have no idea of the Elvish translation or what it would look like in Tengwar.

Another idea (since I seem to recall that you have the music book The Road Goes Ever On) is to look there for lines of poetry, since Tolkien wrote them in Tengwar. The translation should give you an idea of which line it is, I hope.

Sounds cool... I wish I didn't have so much homework so I could work on my Elvish studies a bit more...

You could check out this site for some samples of poetry: http://www.elvish.org/gwaith/language.htm

Or you could do "The world is changed. I feel it in the water; I feel it in the earth; I smell it in the air," which is a cool quote. I dunno if you want anything water-related like you said the other one was.

This in elvish (at least according to the movie, and I think they got it right) is:

I amar prestar aen.
Han mathon ne nen.
Han mathon ne chae.
A han noston ned gwilith.

(Courtesy of arwen-undomiel.com)

You could also do some lines from either of Galadriel's songs. I personally like "Like gold fall the leaves in the wind, long years numberless as the wings of trees" and "But if of ships I now should sing, what ship would come for me? What ship would bear me ever back across so wide a sea?" The first is, of course, in FotR in Quenya. The second song can be found in elvish here: http://www.xs4all.nl/~xelag/quenya_comp_i_sang.html

More elvish stuff here: http://www.geocities.com/petristikka/elvish/index2.html

EDIT: just realized you'd probably want it in Tengwar; this is a great Tengwar site: http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/4948/tengwar/

Good luck!

The ROad had occurred but I wanted to cast the net a bit further - and if I chose to use them... use them because I wanted them best rather than because they were all I had .. so thanks for the links ...

Only trouble is with the world is changing thing ... is I always want to say "I feel it in my water" and I don't want an elvish guzunder especially! But I do love "O lorien" so I will certainly check it out...