Good thread! and Good questions.
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Originally Posted by Galadriel55
Another question you could ask is why Anduril doesn't glow like Sting and Glamdring, even though it was made by Telchar in the first age...
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I think, in case of Anduril, it's because Telchar was a Dwarf, not an Elf.
That doesn't mean the blade wouldn't be special (Telchar did, after all, make the knife Angrist that would cut metal like wood, and which Beren used to cut a Silmarill from Morgoth's crown), only that Dwarves didn't seem to make glowing weapons like the Elves.
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Originally Posted by Galadriel55
I don't think that "penetrative" is the right word to use here..."The Noldor live in their creations" or something similar, anyways. This shows that when Elves (especially Noldor) put so much thought into what they make, that their things reflect their character/power/whaetver else you might call it...
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I think you've hit on a key motif (is that the right word?) which Tolkien incorporated throughout his subcreation - that rational creatures (esp Maia & Elves) are able to incorporate something of their own beings into their creations. That was most obvious in the Rings (esp the One Ring). It also appears in UT (in the essay on The Druedain) where one Druadan was able to let some of his life flow into his carved stone so that it animated and protected friends from Orcs - but at the cost of the creator suffereing along with it. It becomes part of the reason why, after Morgoth killed the Two Trees, Yavanna didn't just make two more.
The making of things was more than a simple physical exercise (like we might make a car), but an artistic expression (like Michelangelo painting the Cistine chapel ceiling, or daVinci painting the Mona Lisa) which expresses the artists life at that point and is not (generally) reproducible at a later time.