Silmarils

[Rune Son of Bjarne]

I imagined them being quite like you Legate "large diamonds. Many-faceted, clear, somewhat white-shining" but even though I pictured them as white-shining, they can shine in all kinds of colours. garr it is hard to describe!

I really do like that cold white light of the stars, but I imagine that when you glance at the silmaril again it would seem slightly different.

Anyways a large diamond would still be small enough for you to carry it upon your brows.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Rune Son of Bjarne

Anyways a large diamond would still be small enough for you to carry it upon your brows.

Well yes, but being 3-D it would stick quite far in front of your forehead. And also, there was this thing Raynor said about Fëanor wearing three of them.

[Rune Son of Bjarne]

Originally Posted by Legate of Amon Lanc

Well yes, but being 3-D it would stick quite far in front of your forehead. And also, there was this thing Raynor said about Fëanor wearing three of them.

Not necessarily. . . if your craftmanship is good enough you can definitly make it work, even with quite big stones.

When feanor had them all three is am sure he had diadem/crown like arangement going on.

[Raynor]

Originally Posted by Rune Son of Bjarne

Not necessarily. . . if your craftmanship is good enough you can definitly make it work, even with quite big stones.

When feanor had them all three is am sure he had diadem/crown like arangement going on.

Well, I think he would look kinda silly with a big mine-worker like thingie, shinning on his bobbing head. Although I believe that Legate's presupposition is thirteen kinds of awesome

Perhaps they just had large heads

He is definitely the winner of this thread

[Ibrîniðilpathânezel]

I always pictured them as being about the size (and approximate shape) of half a golf ball. Maybe a tennis ball. If they were intended to be jewels to be worn, they would need to be shaped in such a way that they could fit into a setting that could be comfortably worn. And the silmarilli are frequently described as being worn -- in Morgoth's crown, in the Nauglamir, on Earendil's brow, etc. Given Feanor's ego, I always felt that he would have wanted to be able to wear his greatest creations, and would have made them in a shape (more or less hemispherical) easily placed in a setting. Tolkien's drawings of them in his heraldic devices shows them as looking, in shape, like six-pointed stars in circles, which could be his way of indicating that they were also faceted.