Jens Hansen and the One Ring: A History of the Nelson Workshop

Most people know the Jens Hansen name from one object: the plain gold ring at the centre of The Lord of the Rings. But by the time the film's art department came looking for a ring maker in 1999, Jens Hansen had been working as a jeweller for more than forty years, and his workshop in Nelson had been open for thirty. This is the longer story, from Denmark to Nelson to the licensed replicas sold today.

For the ring itself, and how it was designed and filmed, read who made the One Ring? first.

From Gram to Auckland

Jens Høyer Hansen was born on 14 July 1940 in Gram, in southern Denmark. In 1952, when he was twelve, his family emigrated from Odense to New Zealand. At fifteen he began an apprenticeship at a jeweller's in Auckland, and in 1960 he showed his work in a solo exhibition at the New Vision Gallery. The company still dates itself from that year.

In the early 1960s he went back to Copenhagen to work for established Danish jewellers, among them A. Michelsen, before returning to New Zealand and setting up his first business near Auckland in 1966.

Nelson, 1968

In 1968 the family moved to Nelson, at the top of the South Island, and in November of that year Hansen opened a workshop there. It moved twice in its first five years and settled on Trafalgar Square in the centre of town in 1973.

His work was modern and sculptural. He is counted among the European-trained jewellers who changed New Zealand jewellery in the 1960s, and a local history of Nelson describes his pieces as miniature architectural sculptures. A government arts grant took him back to Copenhagen to study in the mid-1970s. In the 1980s he helped set up the jewellery classes at what is now the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology, and over his career he held more than thirty solo exhibitions. Te Papa, New Zealand's national museum, holds his work in its collection.

The commission

In March 1999 the art department of Peter Jackson's production approached him for the One Ring. Accounts of how he took the job differ. His son Thorkild has described him as thrilled and honoured; his elder son Halfdan has said his father almost turned it down and the two brothers had to talk him into it.

He submitted fifteen prototypes, and one design was chosen. With Thorkild, a trained goldsmith, he then made more than forty versions for filming, including a large prologue ring about 20 cm across. Several of the prototypes survived, and two of them were put up for auction in 2003.

That same year, 1999, Hansen was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He died on 10 August 1999, more than two years before The Fellowship of the Ring reached cinemas.

The sons take over

After his death the workshop passed to his sons. Thorkild, who had made the film rings with his father, later returned to woodworking. Halfdan, the elder son, had trained and worked as an electrical engineer. He came back to Nelson in 2002, moved from silent partner to running the workshop, and is still in charge today.

The connection with Middle-earth continued. For The Hobbit films in 2011 the workshop made the One Ring props again, along with Vilya, the ring of Elrond, which it had also made for the trilogy. In a 2013 interview with the New Zealand Herald, Tolkien-related work was said to make up about a fifth to a quarter of the business.

Licensed replicas

The licence to sell One Ring merchandise from the films belongs to Wētā Workshop, under its agreement with Warner Bros. Jens Hansen makes the licensed rings and supplies them to Wētā, and each ring is marked with the Jens Hansen, Wētā and New Line marks. A solid gold version was launched at Comic-Con in 2010, and the gold plated tungsten ring and Frodo's chain followed by 2012. Today the range covers tungsten, sterling silver and gold; our One Ring replicas compared lists them with current prices.

The workshop also sells rings that are not licensed. The Movie Ring is a reproduction of its own prop design, plain and without the inscription, which for legal reasons it cannot engrave on unlicensed pieces. It also sells a replica of the Vilya it made for the films, called The Ring of Hugo after Hugo Weaving, who played Elrond, and its own interpretations of other rings from the books under different names. Our guide is this the real One Ring? explains how to tell these apart from the licensed range and from copies.

Why it matters if you are buying

The history explains why the same family workshop can sell both the licensed One Ring and a Movie Ring that looks almost the same: one is made under Wētā's licence, the other is Jens Hansen's own design work, and both come from the bench that made the props. If you are choosing between them, our reviews of the tungsten, silver and gold rings go into the details, and the One Ring size guide covers the sizes the workshop offers.