An original tobacco pipe used by Sir Ian Holm Cuthbert CBE (Ian Holm) as the hobbit Bilbo Baggins in director Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (New Line, 2001).

Jackson personally gifted this production artifact to animation supervisor Randall William Cook in celebration of Cook’s 50th birthday during the making of the film. Cook has won three Academy Awards for his work on the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Included with the prop is the original birthday card from Jackson to Cook when the gift was presented to Cook on his birthday, which includes this personal note:

Happy Birthday, Randy!! Another 61 years to go until you reach the grand old age of Eleventy-One, and Bilbo has made a “donation” to help you get there... enjoy! Love Peter & Fran

The prop includes a letter of authenticity from Cook that reads as follows:

I met Peter Jackson in the early 90s. I was a cartoonist and movie animator, and he liked the stop motion animation I had been doing and the creatures I had created and the sequences I had directed in a couple small films.

I wanted to be a movie director, and was working toward that goal. He was ten years younger than I, and already was a movie director.

He wanted me to leave Los Angeles for New Zealand, to help him on the effects work of a film he was preparing. I had a life in Los Angeles, and New Zealand’s on the other side of the planet, practically, so I declined.

But he was so personable and intelligent and creative that I kept in touch and, a few years later after he had a couple films under his belt and was well on his way to becoming the Peter Jackson we now all know, he announced that he was going to do THE LORD OF THE RINGS and in 1998 I contacted him.

Well, he offered me a job designing action sequences for the films, which would allow me to do something which was the next best thing to being a movie director. And based upon my faith in his talent and convinced that he was uniquely qualified to pull off this particular production and without even seeing a script or creature design I flew to New Zealand.

What followed was a wonderful seven-year creative collaboration with Peter (and his partner, Fran Walsh). While I wound up as the trilogy’s Animation Director, I did design sequences and direct the odd moment here and there, and was consulted by Pete and Fran on any number of creative decisions.

On my fiftieth birthday Pete and Fran gave me a very generous, and very appropriate, gift: Bilbo Baggins’ pipe-weed Pipe. A longtime pipe smoker myself (tobacco, if you must know), this was a perfect present: for display, of course, I never smoked it myself. It hasn’t been used, to my knowledge, since Ian Holm played his last scene with it, all those years ago.

A treasured gift, for sure.

But, having given up tobacco recently, and divesting myself of 47 years’ worth of pipes and accessories, I figured it was also time to let this rare memento of a beloved film trilogy find its way to a new, loving home.

Randall William Cook

Animation Designer and Supervisor: Weta Digital

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

Academy Award: Best Visual Effects

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

Includes a copy of the DVD: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)