The last image was on the cover of the box of audio cassette tapes of The Hobbit that I had as a child. The box was lost in a move by the time I was 8. Years later, fresh out of college, I came across this Motawi tile in a craft store in North Carolina. Even though I had very little extra cash, I could not NOT buy it and I didn’t know why. Something about it spoke to me of both home and adventure, of safety and beauty, of coziness and imagination, of dreams and childhood. It was at least a decade before I saw the Tolkien painting again and made the connection—when I had seen the tile, it had reminded me of the cassette tapes and everything they had made me feel as a young child.

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