The Tree Beyond the Leaf: Thirty Years of Collecting Tolkien

The Empty Room

I was twelve when Middle-earth first entered my life. My older brother, six years my senior, had left home abruptly at eighteen, and his empty room became mine. It held almost nothing — except a single set of In de Ban van de Ring, the Dutch translation of The Lord of the Rings.

I opened the first volume and began to read, and I did not stop. I devoured it with the intensity only a twelve-year-old can, transported utterly into that other world. Only years later did I discover that the set I read was the very first printing of that translation. At the time, none of that mattered. What mattered was that Tolkien had arrived — and he would never leave.

In the hardest moments of life, his work has been a companion and a refuge. These days, when things grow heavy, it is often The Silmarillion that I return to. But everything began there, in that empty room, with those books.

The First Hunt

At first, my instinct was simple: I wanted my own copies of the books I loved. Soon I wanted everything Tolkien had written. Farmer Giles of Ham, Smith of Wootton Major, The Silmarillion — anything I could find. I haunted second-hand shops and Sunday book fairs, searching for a missing title, a different dust jacket, a book that carried something of its own story.

Then came 1992. Johan Vanhecke organised a Tolkien exhibition in Antwerp. I went more than once. It was the first time I saw Tolkien’s handwriting, his sketches, his manuscripts. Until then, Tolkien had lived only on the printed page; there he was revealed as a craftsman of ink, language, and care.

That same year marked his centenary. Exhibitions opened in Oxford and The Hague. Together they showed the scale of what Tolkien’s imagination had set in motion. Standing among those artefacts, I realised that collecting could be more than a solitary pursuit — it could connect generations. The older scholars and enthusiasts who had spent decades preserving his legacy were meeting a younger generation eager to continue it. A torch was being passed.

Building a Library

Through the late 1990s I searched constantly. Belgium was quiet ground for Tolkien material, so every discovery felt like unexplored territory. The arrival of the internet changed everything. The hunt that had once meant dusty bookshops and long train rides became global. Suddenly, I could reach collectors and booksellers across continents, share discoveries, and trade knowledge.

By 2002, my own shelves were overflowing. I needed order. What began as a private catalogue grew into something larger: TolkienLibrary.com. It started as a bibliographical resource but quickly became a meeting place for scholars, collectors, and fans. It allowed me to merge collecting with documentation — to share knowledge instead of hoarding it.

The thrill of acquisition began to give way to the satisfaction of accuracy — of knowing precisely which edition something was, when it was printed, why it mattered. Provenance became the heart of collecting. A good collection was no longer measured in volume but in understanding.

Objects with a Voice

Certain objects changed my sense of what collecting could mean.

The proof copies of In de Ban van de Ring — the first translation of The Lord of the Rings into any language — connected my own beginning as a reader to Tolkien’s first crossing into another tongue.

Then there was the silver cigarette box once belonging to Alan Rook. Inside were faint pencil markings — initials and small numbers, a tally of cigarettes and debts among friends: C. S. Lewis, Tolkien, Rook, and others. Most of those men never returned from the war. The box is modest, easily missed, but it carries fellowship and loss in equal measure.

And finally, Tolkien’s academic gown. Once black, now greened with age. Found decades later in an American collection, it was the garment he wore to teach and walk the Oxford quads — not ceremonial, but ordinary. After many years it came to me. When it travelled again — to Paris for Tolkien: Voyage en Terre du Milieu and later to Trieste for Tolkien. Uomo, Professore, Autore — I realised that some objects are meant to be shared.

Each of these pieces carries a story. Together, they taught me that collecting is not about ownership, but about attention — a form of listening to the traces left behind.

The Cor Blok Quest

If one journey changed me entirely, it was the search for the art of Cor Blok.

For many Dutch readers, myself included, his paintings were the first images ever associated with The Lord of the Rings. His work had been used on the paperback covers and a few hardbacks, yet his name was nowhere to be found. I first saw his originals at the 1992 exhibition in The Hague, and after it ended, the paintings were sold — scattered across the world, almost lost.

His art struck me instantly. It wasn’t illustration; it was interpretation. Spare, abstract, yet deeply moving. Many dismissed it as simplistic, even childlike, but to me it carried something rare: space for imagination. In a time when fantasy art was becoming increasingly literal, Blok’s minimalism was a revelation.

I decided to find the missing paintings. It took years. Each piece I tracked down led to another clue — a collector’s note, a letter, a photograph. I wrote hundreds of emails, travelled to see and scan the works, and slowly pieced together where they had gone. Each discovery was like uncovering a piece of a vast, scattered puzzle.

Along the way, I met many of the owners — collectors who shared a quiet love for these small, powerful works — and, eventually, Cor Blok himself.

At first, he regarded the paintings as something from his youth, best left in the past. But as we talked, travelled, and rediscovered the works together, something shifted. He began to see them anew, to recognise their importance. Tolkien himself had once seen several of these paintings when Blok visited him in Oxford — and bought a few, which the family kept for decades.

That encounter between the two men always fascinated me — a bridge between generations of imagination. I believe the Tolkien family’s decision to bring Blok’s art back into public view decades later — first through the official Tolkien Calendar 2011, then A Tolkien Tapestry, and again in the Tolkien 2012 Calendar — was in part a response to the cinematic grandeur of the films. His work offered something different: a quiet antidote, a reminder that imagination lives in suggestion as much as in spectacle.

When A Tolkien Tapestry: Pictures to Accompany The Lord of the Rings was finally published in 2011, I felt immense pride — not boastful, just grateful. I would never own these paintings, but I had helped to bring them home, to give Cor the recognition he deserved, and to share something beautiful with the world. It was, for me, the moment I understood what collecting could become: not accumulation, but contribution.

Aiding the Collectors

That understanding changed everything. Gradually, I began helping others — collectors, institutions, investors, and families — to build, refine, or part with their collections. Over the years I’ve assisted countless collectors and institutions — far more than I could name here — but a few examples show the range of what this work has come to mean.

The first great collaboration was with the Greisinger Museum in Switzerland. Its founder, a collector with extraordinary vision, dreamed of creating the world’s first permanent museum devoted to Middle-earth. I helped to shape the Tolkien library that anchors it — a collection that reflects not only completeness but curiosity. Today, it stands as a place where scholarship and wonder meet, and it reminds me what can happen when collectors think beyond themselves.

Next came a collector in the United Kingdom, formerly focused on Stephen King, who wanted to build a Tolkien collection of true museum calibre. Over years of dialogue and care, it became one of the most complete and scholarly private collections anywhere. Some of its pieces deserve a public home one day, and I intend to help make that happen.

And then there was the American collector, gravely ill, who entrusted me with his entire library — thousands of items built over a lifetime. I spent weeks cataloguing it, identifying the rarest pieces, and finding a buyer who would preserve its integrity. The collection moved as one, its story intact. From that legacy came Tolkien’s academic gown, which remains with me — a symbolic heirloom from one steward to another.

These projects changed my role. I became not just a collector, but a mediator, researcher, and custodian. I handled pieces most will never see, often off-market, invisible to the world. I verified, documented, and preserved their histories. The work is demanding, but deeply fulfilling. It has given me access to learn, to grow, to handle the rarest material — and to make sure it finds its rightful home.

From Books to Stories

At some point, I realised that I had begun collecting stories more than books.

Each inscription, each letter, each small annotation became a mystery to solve. A name, a date, a half-erased dedication — all potential doorways into lost history.

Sometimes a clue could take years to unravel. A first name in a letter, a marginal note, a line in an archive catalogue — each one led me deeper. I have spent days tracing a person’s identity, contacting families, visiting local museums, libraries, and historical societies. Some leads fade away; others unfold into entire narratives.

Tolkien rarely signed anything without purpose. Almost every signature has a story behind it — a friendship, an occasion, a quiet act of gratitude. Finding those connections requires persistence and empathy. I have flown across continents to meet elderly people who still remembered him, sometimes recording their memories in their final weeks. I always feel the clock ticking — a race against time to preserve voices before they vanish.

In the process, I’ve discovered new materials, letters, and insights into Tolkien’s life that would otherwise have disappeared into silence. This, I’ve come to believe, is collecting at its highest level — not the gathering of objects, but of meaning.

My goal now is to gather these stories into a book: a record of inscriptions, letters, friendships, and the long human threads behind them. That, to me, would be the ultimate act of preservation — to ensure that the stories behind the signatures live on.

A Philosophy of Collecting

After all these years, my view of collecting has settled into something simple: quality over quantity, meaning over possession. I would rather have one shelf of irreplaceable items than fifty of mediocrity.

Every collector has their own logic. Some pursue every translation, every cover variant; others chase the rarest signed first editions. I have come to value those items that connect directly to Tolkien the man — his handwriting, his daily life, his relationships. Anyone with resources can buy a fine first edition, but Tolkien’s schoolbook, his gown, or his notes — those are fragments of the real person behind the mythology.

When advising collectors, I try to align their passion with purpose. An investor needs a different path than a scholar, but all require discipline: to resist the impulse to buy everything, to focus on coherence and story. The best collections are built on patience and restraint.

For me, the act of collecting has become less about acquisition and more about stewardship. Every collector is temporary. Our task is to care for what we hold until it passes to another. To keep it safe, documented, understood. To make sure it can still speak when we are gone.

A Fellowship of Visitors

In recent years, visitors have begun to come and see the Tolkien Library itself — the collection I’ve built over three decades. When people step inside, I always feel a strange mix of joy and nervousness. It’s deeply personal — the work of decades, the story of my life — and showing it feels like revealing a part of myself.

But once the books begin to speak, the anxiety fades. Visitors lean in, ask questions, and soon we are simply talking Tolkien. We share stories, discoveries, small jokes over tea. These are not museum tours; they are conversations among friends.

I never want the collection to feel like a display of ownership. It is a meeting place — a space for dialogue, curiosity, and gratitude. Those are the moments that remind me why I started: not to build walls of books, but to open doors between people.

The Northern Continuation

In 2025, we left Belgium and moved north to Trollbergvika, across the fjord from Risør, on Norway’s southern coast. It was a decision born of necessity — for peace, health, and time to begin again. The Tolkien Library travelled with us, box by box. It now fills a rented space near Risør: quiet, light, and surrounded by forests, just outside the town centre: a quiet, green space for work, writing, and preservation.

Here, the work continues. Each box unpacked is a small act of renewal. The view over the Skagerrak changes by the hour; the light moves across the shelves like a slow tide.

My next dream is to bring the collection into the centre of Risør — to create a place where visitors can see the books, letters, and art, and learn about Tolkien’s deep northern roots. A Tolkien Centre in Norway feels right: not grand, but alive, a meeting of landscapes and stories. Tolkien’s imagination was shaped by the North; here, the North might return the favour.

The Collector’s Tree

When I think about what these decades have meant, I return to Tolkien’s Leaf by Niggle.

Niggle spends his life painting a tree he can never finish. He worries, restarts, doubts himself. Yet in the end, his tree stands whole — every leaf complete.

Collecting feels much the same. Each book, each story, each connection is a leaf. The tree is never finished, but tending it gives life meaning.

What matters is that the tree keeps growing — not only through my own hands, but through those who come after. The branches may change direction, but the roots remain: curiosity, care, and the will to preserve.

I have come to see collecting as a quiet form of creation — a dialogue between past and future, where each act of preservation becomes a small act of making. We gather, we study, we share, and in doing so, we build something that was not there before: continuity.

And perhaps that is enough. The books, the stories, the friendships — they are all part of one living tree. My task is to keep tending it while I can, and to leave it ready for others to carry on the work.