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Garden Gnomes

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Anonymous

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What exactly is the point of Garden Gnomes apart from a kind of cheesy ironic form of decoration? Was there some forgotten mystical/pagan reason why people had them, as some kind of garden guardian spirit perhaps? Or was it just a case of some enterprising chap who started selling little clay blokes with beards to make a few quid? Where did the concept of a gnome originate?
 
People couldn't afford wotzizfaces 'David', or the other guy's 'Thinker', so they just settled for little bearded men in silly hats.

Says a lot about life, don't it? :)
 
I think the earliest examples of garden gnomes were made on the instructions of a rather wealthy Lord (so&so) who used them to decorate an elaborate grotto he was having constructed.
 
p p p and we've all had to suffer the little buggers ever since . . .

Carole
 
Didn't that very dull ex-PM, John Major have a father whose circus
career was succeeded by a period as manufacturer of garden gnomes?

Modern garden centres seem to offer a much wider choice of little
Spirits of Place, from Buddahs to tortoises and Sun-Faces.

Probably they arose as a manufactured novelty in the thirties. The
history of it was . . . oh I can't be bothered . . .

I have met people whose gnomes appear to be deployed with no
sense of irony whatever. Actually, I think I prefer people with no
taste to people with no taste who think that they have an alibi by
pretending to have a sense of humour. :(
 
The dress of the German miners, as shown in Georgius Agricola's 1556, book on mining, "De Re Metallica".Shows the miners dressed in simular garb to the modern garden gnome!!!!!
 
a couple of years ago in Italy i heard a story about a french liberation group that was going around gardens freeing gnomes .
If i'm not mistaken they thought that they were some kind of "spirits" trapped by evil sorcerers but they might been taking the piss
By the way in the last FT magazine there is an article about Paracelsus that didn't mention him as the coiner of the word "gnome"
Coincidence??? i don't think so! :eek!!!!:

This is the Paracelsus article mentioned above:

Paracelsus: The Mercurial mage
Paracelsus was a genuine Renaissance man: "alchemist, scientist, medical visionary and proto-fortean." David Hambling assesses the life and legacy of this self-proclaimed "monarch of all the arts".
Click to expand...
By David Hambling April 2002

This article was once available on the now-defunct Fortean Times website. The MIA article can still be accessed via the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/2007101...ticles/248/paracelsus_the_mercurial_mage.html
 
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I know of one evil garden gnome-my mother's fiance ( T ) is a gardener and used to garden for a millionaire couple , they had this hideous gnome statue with an evil face, T hated it . When the woman millionaire went mad and the couple split up they gave T the gnome as a memento of his time with them ! My mother was very wary of it and told T to get rid of it so he gave it to another couple he gardened for who had been late paying their bills ( to damp down any guilt ) . Shortly after this the husband drowned himself in his swimming pool and that's the last we heard of the evil gnome. For now......
Marion
 
A further superficial enquiry into this subject yields even more bizarre stuff, from the amusing to the downright disturbing. Lamport Hall claims to have the original Garden Gnomes from back in the seventeenth century. There have even been some attempts to draw parallels between fairy folklore and the recent craze for abducting and either liberating or taking gnomes on holiday.
 
According to Ripley's a woman had her garden gnome stolen. Only to find it in the garden six weeks later with photos of it standing in front of the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben and other sights.
 
You could try emailing the people at the Gnome Reserve - they might have some info.

There's also Nigel Suckling & Wayne Anderson's Gnomes and Gardens, published by Pavillion UK, 96pgs, £14.99.

And this link has some info on the gnomes' red hats, linking them to Mithra.

Or you could go on a guided tour.

[Emp edit: Updating links to archived versions.]
 
I just bought the September issue of Dolls House World (no sniggering, you lot), and there's an article about garden gnomes. I remembered this thread, so here's what it says:
In 1847 Sir Charles Isham imported gnomes from Nuremburg. The gnomes are thought to have originally been good luck tokens made by miners in Germany. They were sold as gnomen-figuren meaning miniature figures, but Sir Charles took this to mean figures of gnomes and named them so.

These were much smaller than present day versions and Sir Charles decided they could be useful to hold place names at the table, before changing his mind and housing them outside. He built a rock garden for them; the earliest alpine garden in England, which measured 90 feet long, 47 feet wide and 24 feet tall. It faced North so that the alpine plants he grew could flourish there.

Sir Charles is said to have created tableaux of the gnomes working around their mines and even built a new wing on his house with a room that faced the rockery so that he could keep an eye on the little people.

The rockery is still to be found at Lamport Hall in Northamptonshire, which was the family home of the Ishams for around 400 years. Unfortunately, the gnomes are no longer there. All but one of the 150 were disposed of or lost as his three daughters had them removed after his death in 1903. The survivor only lasted because he had fallen into a crevice, where he lay protected from the weather and ravages of time for many years before his chance rediscovery.

[...] If you visit the Hall, you can see a replica of the gnome in the China Passage. The real gnome is now quite a celebrity, having travelled as a guest to many countries, and is kept in a very secure place, as he was last valued at one million pounds for insurance purposes in 1997.
Click to expand...
A few questions this article brings to mind...

Did Sir Charles arrange his "gnomes" in mining scenes because they were dressed as miners, or because he thought them to be gnomes? Do gnomes traditionally mine, or is that another kind of fairy? I thought dwarves were miners.

And when did the last gnome start "travelling", and does he have anything to do with the postcard-sending gnome trend?
 
Gnomes were the elemental spirits of Earth as Sylphs were of Air,
Salamanders of Fire and Undines of Water. So gnomic associations with
both mining and gardens stem from this earthiness. Probably the
flashing and mooning kind represent earthiness as well. :rolleyes:
 
Ok gnome-fetishists, a quick question: Why are the bankers of Zurich refered to as gnomes?

hope i'm remembering this right.
 
According to the COED, a secondary meaning of the word "gnome"
is "a person with sinister influence, especially in international finance".

There may be some connection with the Greek Gnome, meaning opinion
and Gignosko = know. The dark influence of bankers affects the
world in an underlying way, like tunnelers.

The system of elemental spirits mentioned above was the invention of
Paracelsus: the COED credits him with the invention of gnome as a word
from the Latin Gnomus. Not a lot of inventing needed, then.

In 1493, Paracelsus was born at Einsideln, which is near Zürich!

It all adds up. Nearly. :rolleyes:
 
Re: Gnomes of Zurich

I always thought it was just a sarcastic, jokey term for the secretive Swiss banks.

From:
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/gnomesofzurich.asp

Gnomes of Zurich

A term used during the 1964 Sterling crisis by Great Britain Labor Ministers to refer to Swiss banks.

Great Britain Labor (sic) Ministers were convinced that the foreign exchange speculation activities of Swiss banks were causing the devaluation of Sterling.

Just like legendary gnomes who dwelled underground and counted their riches, Swiss bankers were known for their extremely secretive policies.
Click to expand...

Later commentators just read hidden meanings into, and developed conspiracy theories, from what was a sarcastic comment.
 
Anyone remember that true story (I think it was on That's Life or something) many moons ago. Anyway, this gnome disappeared from a garden. The owners weren't that bothered, but then they started getting postcards from all over the world, from "Harry the gnome". Australia, USA, Peru, Russia, you name it. Three (?) years later, the gnome suddenly reappeared in the garden, with a suntan. :)
Personally I can't stand the things. I guess they, or similar figures, must go back thousands of years.

Bill.
 
Big Bill Robins said:
Anyone remember that true story (I think it was on That's Life or something) many moons ago. Anyway, this gnome disappeared from a garden. The owners weren't that bothered, but then they started getting postcards from all over the world, from "Harry the gnome". Australia, USA, Peru, Russia, you name it. Three (?) years later, the gnome suddenly reappeared in the garden, with a suntan. :)
Personally I can't stand the things. I guess they, or similar figures, must go back thousands of years.

Bill.
Click to expand...

Yep,look here.
 
Paracelsus was the first to use the word gnomus from which we get gnome -

"possibly from Gk. *genomos "earth-dweller." A less-likely suggestion is that Paracelsus based it on the homonym that means "intelligence" (preserved in gmonic, q.v.)"
 
More about the Gnome Liberation Front

Found a couple more stories on the GnLF:

One from the nth position an e-zine advertised elsewhere on the site:
http://www.nthposition.com/strange_gnome_lib.html

Someone else who claims to be the GnLF:
http://members.internettrash.com/sprkythdvl/gnome.htm

And the Gnome Liberation Army:
http://www.gnome-liberation-army.co.uk/glaindex.htm


I am currently house-hunting and a garden suitable for a sustainable gnome colony is one of my criteria.

BTW what on Earth possessed Bowie to produce 'The Laughing Gnome.'
 
On the A50 thru Warrington the other weekend were about 7 or 8 gnomes playing cricket on the grassed central reservation.

Can't believe this thread has got so far without mentioning Derek's gnome on Coronation Street, remember the newspapers blaming this for a number of copycat gnomenappings (if there's such a word!), but they'd been going on well before this. A case of art imitating life for a change.
 
Re: More about the Gnome Liberation Front

Timble said:
BTW what on Earth possessed Bowie to produce 'The Laughing Gnome.'
Click to expand...

Ha ha ha
hee hee hee
I'm the Laughing Gnome
And you can't catch me!

Actually, I think it's a great slice of British psychadelia, catchy tune.
 
I heard that "The Laughing Gnome" was Bowie's tribute to the songs of Anthony Newley.
 
Abducted garden gnomes in search of home

taken from Reuters
Abducted garden gnomes in search of home 13:56, Oct 28 2003

PARIS (Reuters) - A French police station has been stuck with a room of homeless garden gnomes, victims of a wave of gnome abductions, after a fresh bid to trace their owners failed.

Only a trickle of people showed up for Monday's "gnome return day" at the police station in Saint-Die-des-Vosges, near the eastern city of Strasbourg, and only one person was reunited with their stolen gnome, police said.

Some 75 kidnapped gnomes were recovered in 2001 after a group called the Garden Gnome Liberation Front released them, leaving them on the steps of the Saint-Die-des-Vosges cathedral. Police are yet to reunite 43 of the gnomes with their owners.

"In wanting to set them free, the Liberation Front has virtually imprisoned them," policeman Sylvain Brucker told Reuters on Tuesday, adding that the local prosecutor could decide to sell the kitsch garden ornaments in a police auction.

"Perhaps there are people with gardens who would like to adopt them," he said.
Click to expand...

Free too a good gnome then?

sorry couldn't resist that, I'll get my coat.
 
Reminds me of that story line a few years back with Derek Wilton in Corrie. His gnome was stolen (can't rememeber who by now) and they kept sending postcards to him from different places and signing them with the gnomes name. :p
 
Uum... If someone reading this lives in very picturesque little village in the lake district that has a fantastic pub, and woke one morning last summer to find all their gnomes gathered in a sinister semi-circle around their front door...sorry, that was me.:blush:
 
i dont if this counts?
but when i was back home for the cardiff meet
i saw in the german xmas market a stall selling gnomes
and there was a orang otang (sp?) gnome for sale and instantly thourght of yithi :D
 
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