Tiny Wooden Aragorn

Here's a tiny wooden Aragorn I have made for lindahoyland.  He's not quite three inches tall.   I was terribly keen to carve him once I had the idea, because I thought Aragorn in his Ranger's outfit would work well in the style of a Lewis Chessman.  He's come out a little less cartoonish than they are, but I am pleased with him.  For one thing, he stands up!  I find that quite hard to achieve: this is why many of my carvings are designed to hang up rather than stand up.

I agonised over which wood to use.  I had almost settled on oak, for its durability, and I even cut a piece of oak for the job, but I kept looking at it and it was *just wrong*.  So I went out and wandered around looking at trees, and realised that actually, I have the perfect tree for an Aragorn figure in the front hedge: Rowan.

 It's not a long-lived tree, as trees go: it lives perhaps two hundred years - but it pops up in unexpected places from seed.  It has white blossom like the White Tree of Gondor, the fruit has been used to flavour beer, it's a tree that hybridizes easily.   It is sometimes called the Wayfarer's Tree, or the Traveller's Tree.   And of course it is well known to have strong powers to ward off evil.

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