A Far Green Country is an original design Irish dance dress by Rachel Murphy of Silverlode Needlecraft.  The base fabric is a rich Kelly green iridescent dupioni silk.  Other appliqué fabrics—lamés, glitterdot, brocades—include various metallic shades of green, purple, red/orange, gold, and silver.  The embroidery, including the script on the cuffs, is freehand machine work in the same colors.  The pleats—front and back—are a lovely magenta-green glitterdot, and the skirt lining and bloomers are a silver “shattered glass” lycra.  The dress is accented with over 550 clear Swarovski (Austrian) crystals!

The Tengwar script on the cuffs is the Elvish word, “Valimar,” which is the Dwelling of the Valar (angelic beings); ie, the Blessed Realm that is spoken of in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion.  A Far Green Country, with it’s silver-white waves, the two trees that echo the imagery two trees of Valinor (or “Valimar”), and the imagery of the sun behind the distant green hills, was inspired by one of the loveliest passages in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, in the last chapter, “The Grey Havens”:

“And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed on into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water.  And then it seemed to him that…the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.”

designer/seamstress
Rachel Murphy

Far Green Country was completed in November, 2006.

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