Who Made the One Ring? Sauron in the Story, Jens Hansen on Screen

There are two answers to this question, one inside the story and one outside it, and both are worth knowing.

In the story: Sauron

In Tolkien's history of Middle-earth, the Rings of Power were made by the Elven smiths of Eregion in the Second Age, led by Celebrimbor and taught by Sauron, who was then hiding behind a fair disguise. Sauron then forged the One Ring alone, in the fires of Mount Doom, and poured much of his own power into it. Its purpose was to rule the wearers of the other rings. The Elves sensed what he had done and took off their rings, and the long war that followed shapes everything that happens in The Lord of the Rings.

The One Ring could only be unmade where it was made, in the fire of Mount Doom. That is why Frodo has to carry it back there instead of simply destroying it. Our One Ring page follows the ring from Sauron to Frodo, and how many Rings of Power are there? covers the other rings made in Eregion.

On screen: Jens Hansen

For Peter Jackson's films, the ring had to be made for real, and many times over. In March 1999 the production's art department approached Jens Hansen, a jeweller who was born in Gram, Denmark, in 1940, moved to New Zealand with his family in 1952 and had built his reputation in Nelson. The brief was a ring with the power and presence of the one in the book.

Hansen submitted fifteen prototypes in different weights and finishes, all in the plain, sculptural style he was known for. The production chose one, and that design became the One Ring of the films. Jens and his son Thorkild, also a goldsmith, then made more than forty versions for filming. They were scaled for different shots and sized for different hands, from small solid gold rings for Hobbit fingers to a ring about eight inches across for the prologue, where the ring turns through the air.

According to the Jens Hansen workshop, the ring filmed for The Lord of the Rings was 18ct yellow gold, weighed about 17 grams, was 2.7 mm thick through the band and about 7 mm wide. It was plain. The inscription that appears in a few scenes was added by computer afterwards; the inscription article explains why that matters for replicas. The same design was used again for The Hobbit films, and the workshop also made the chain Frodo wears and Vilya, the ring of Elrond.

Jens Hansen died in August 1999, before any of the films were released. He never saw his ring on screen.

After the films

The workshop carried on in Nelson, and it is now run by Jens's eldest son, Halfdan Hansen. It makes the licensed One Ring replicas, with the inscription engraved, exclusively for Wētā Workshop under Wētā's licence from Warner Bros., in tungsten, sterling silver and gold. It also sells a plain Movie Ring in the film shape without the inscription or the licence. If you are trying to work out which of these is "the real one", read is this the real One Ring?, and to see the replicas side by side, go to One Ring replicas compared.