Literary Inspiration - Dragons

Last week literary inspiration was an artist's work as referenced in the novel The Calder game. 

This week it is a favourite mythical creature, the dragon. Dragons are a part of many cultures around the world and are featured in a variety of great fantasy novels.

Christopher Paolini has a quartet of books about dragons and their riders. In the first book we meet Saphira, a blue dragon.

Cover of Eragon, showing Saphira

Using some dichroic, and metallic blue beads I created this version of Julia Pretl's dragon box to represent Saphira.

Saphira Box

Having completed Saphira, I decided to create a box inspired by another favourite dragon, Smaug, from The Hobbit. Smaug is described as being crusted with gems and fragments of gold from his hoard.

Smaug as illustrated by J.R.R. Tolkien

To bring the luster of the gold I used gold plated delicas. The finial on the top of the box represent the Arkenstone, a treasured jewel of the Dwarf Kingdom stolen by Smaug.

Smaug box

In total I have completed three dragon boxes. I hope to do more in the future including Glaedr, a golden dragon, Thorn, a red dragon and Fírnen, a green dragon.