Uh...

What a disaster! That signature looks horrible to me.

That's a particularly nasty fake-looking signature. Certainly for (allegedly) 40 years ago

It is not even by a forger who has looked at Christopher Tolkien's real signature, this for me is the worst ever Christopher Tolkien fake signature.

Poor pencil work by Ted too...

Yeah.... "ebay" "Tolkien" and "signed" don't mix.

Khamûl:

I don't believe this signature is genuine. The sketch also looks like a copy of a known example by a famous Tolkien illustrator.

nellybessy129

Good morning, thank you for your message. May I ask why you think that to be the case please? This book, along with many others had been collected by my late father- he was an ardent book enthusiast with many years experience and therefore I doubt whether the signature isn't correct. Perhaps it would be prudent for me to have it professionally examined? Thank you in any event.

...

I have to say that the signature looks consistent with the those on the many, many letters I've received from Christopher over the years.

Recall that Christopher has two different signatures: one he uses for mass signings, and one he uses for letters and personal signings. This is an example of the latter. You've all seen the former, of course.

Most people on here have seen the latter too I'd think, Aelfwine; this is how he signed copies in 1977. But I would certainly defer to your experience & better judgement on CT signatures. However the signature, if it's contemporary, is a pretty shaky example I think; it's also unusually positioned within that 1977 copy based on the examples I've seen (or own). That sketch also looks like a copy of the Ted Nasmith sketch that was being sold by TolkienBookshelf/DM (inside a 1998 copy); except this is poorer & unsigned. Ted did this in Moreton in 2008. It looks like a copy of this; the image is widely available online when one seraches for signed copies. And there is no provenance, yet. If there's an interesting story behind this though...

Khamûl wrote:
However the signature, if it's contemporary, is a pretty shaky example I think; it's also unusually positioned within that 1977 copy based on the examples I've seen (or own).

That was what I felt was wrong with it -- it just didn't seem right for a *1977* signature, due to the extreme shakiness. I didn't agree with Trotter that it didn't *look* anything like a correctly styled signature. I could well believe that is was a signature of a late 80s or 90+ year old, CT, though.

I'd defer to Aelfwine as having vastly more experience, of course, but compared to the signed-at-the-time Silmarillions I have seen (which isn't that many), it doesn't look like I'd expect.