SETTING SAIL: BOAT DESIGN Production Designer Ramsey Avery on the intricate work that went into each unique vessel we see in the series
The production’s other major seafaring build, Elendil’s Númenórean vessel, first seen in Episode 3, was three times larger than the elegant swanship, and it was a similar feat of craftsmanship to design a boat that felt powerful, yet dated from antiquity. The elegance of ancient Venetian boats with scorpion tails provided the basis for the ship’s body, while the double masts of Chinese junk ships inspired the design of the sails. “That ship’s just a spectacular bit of carpentry. There’s no straight line on that ship, everything has a slight cant or curve to it,” says Avery. However, designing a boat is one thing; actually building it is another. The engineering process took 10 months, and Avery credits the high quality of the resulting creations to the local talent: “New Zealand is a great country for building boats. There’s a skill set, a knowledge base. The work here is just amazing.”
T o carry Galadriel and her cohort to the Undying Lands of Valinor, the craftspeople behind The Rings of Power had to build a vessel familiar from several of Tolkien’s tales: an Elven swanship. “It’s a very specific Tolkien thing,” explains Production Designer Ramsey Avery. “It has the prow and shape of a swan...but when you try to draw that, it looks like an afternoon-in-the- park kind of thing. It’s hard to make that feel dramatic.” As a result, the team enacted a design process that married Tolkien’s concepts with the team’s vision for more organic Elven design principles: “We had this idea of Elven architecture always coming from nature. So it’s not a swan; it’s a swan that’s built out of vines.”
“New Zealand is a great country for building boats. There’s a skill set, a knowledge base. The work here is just amazing.”
— Ramsey Avery, Production Designer
Above: Filming of the Elven swanship transporting Galadriel and her company to Valinor.
Above Top: Construction of Elendil’s Númenórean ship on set. Above Bottom: The Númenórean ship as seen on screen.
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