Welcome to The Sorcerers Library
Well... Here we are, today (the 25th of September
2011) the site is now officially 10 years old! (that’s ten years since i made
the site public anyway) It's been an up and down 10 years for the site!
The site rose from frustration of there not being a decent Enchantica or Hap
Henriksen catalogue and information website due to Royal Doulton closing the
chat on their site. I was going to do my own site and I announced it, but I was
contacted by Trev and Ang who had a similar idea and they asked if i would
supply the catalogue list and photos for their site instead... With no personal
website building experience I decided that it was perhaps a good idea to let
someone else do the site building, so I agreed to the proposal. Some of you
will remember Trev and Ang's site well and it had a great community feel since
they had a forum populated from the collectors that used to be on the official
forum.
Unfortunately after a year or so i started to become frustrated because i
wanted more than just the single photo of each piece and more information about
each piece but my idea for multiple shots and close-ups were rejected along
with most of my ideas for many other mini sections! So eventually i set about
learning out how to build a website... I told no one, i kept very quiet while i
built the site, i took thousands of photos on my newly purchased digital camera
that i bought for the sole purpose of the website (a huge expense at the time
when i wasnt even sure if the site would work, plus digital photography was still
in its infancy)
At the same time i decided that the site would include other sections beside
Enchantica, i decided to include other Holland Studio Craft ranges like Fables
& Jenny Oliver Faeries, but the other major decision was to include Andrew
Bills new range for the then fledgling company called The Dragonsite.
For over 6 months i worked solidly on the site but in secret! I then uploaded a
few pages in September 2001 and asked a few close friend collectors to check
out my pages, i asked for them to be totally honest and brutal (i picked the
people carefully because i wanted people who would be honest with me) The
response was amazing, they all came back with similar replies all saying this
is what we’ve always wanted from a site! That confirmed to me that my ideas
were actually good ones and not just dreams.
Over the years the site has grown and grown and many more large sections and
mini sections added but the site went into hibernation for about a year when my
dad had a severe stroke and then later i went into a 6 month depression. When i
came back to the site I was shocked at the amount of support from the loyal
collectors who had stuck around and offered help.
Eventually i started a forum on the site, this is something i said i wouldn’t
do because everyone chatted on Trev & Ang’s site but that had all but
closed and it felt wrong chatting about Enchantica and other ranges on the
Dragonsite forum.
Then in 2006, Rob Simpson contacted me about doing an exclusive dragon for the
website! He had promised to design me a logo for the site back in 2001 so this
was his way of making up for taking so long :) Rob has now done 3 exclusive
pieces for me, the 2nd one to my idea and the 3rd one to
my design :)
And now the site is as you see it! There are bits i want to
change and there are sections i’d like to add, but as a lot of you know, i’ve
lost a lot of my enthusiasm for fantasy collectables but i’m still committed to
improving the site even though it is to a slower extent.
I still wouldn’t be able to do the site without the help of
collectors who have allowed me into their homes to take photos of pieces that i
don’t own myself. I still have photos of collections i still need to add to the
site and i promise that i will add them before the end of the year.
So... Where do we go from here? I’m not 100 percent sure because old interests
have started to come back to me along with new ones and that has meant that
Dragons etc... have started to take a back seat and i see them staying there
for a long time! But don’t worry, i still plan to add to the site and make some
changes along the way. There will also still be a 10th Anniversary
piece too, but later than planned. There are no major plans for anything else
special in the sites 10th year but some surprises may appear in the
new year if i think of anything.
I would just like to thank everyone past and present who have helped me keep the
site going with your encouragement! It really does mean a lot to me