Quote:
Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin
Earlier Thorin had sneered that "those villagers" "drink out of clay, and they cannot tell a gem from a glass bead." All of which suggests that Thorin's community, at least, had no experience of selling fine articles of craft to hobbits.
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Maybe not
cups specifically, but earlier in the same
Unfinished Tales The Quest of Erebor passage you note, are these words from Gandalf to Glóin:
Quote:
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'I suppose you think [The Shirefolk] simple, because they are generous and do not haggle; and think them timid, because you never sell them any weapons'
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That would seem to indicate commerce between the two races, excluding weaponry. Otherwise, what are they "haggling" over?