Whimsical, funny, vulgar: A brief history of the garden gnome

By N evin M artell The Washington Post

DESPITE THEIR small stature, garden gnomes spark big debates. Are they chintzy or classy? Lovable or loathsome? The perfect addition to a garden bed or an easy way to ruin your landscaping? No matter your opinion, there’s no denying that these little folks are conversation starters.

The story of how these sometimes whimsical, sometimes comical, sometimes vulgar statues became fixtures in yards and gardens is as colorful and complex as the creatures themselves. “That’s the trouble with gnomes,” says Twigs Way, garden historian and author of “Garden Gnomes: A History.” “They come from lots of different kinds of sources.”

There are plenty of little characters in mythologies from around the world — including the Egyptian god Bes, and brownies, house spirits in British and Scottish folklore — and small stone figures started appearing in Italian gardens during the Renaissance. However, according to Way, what have become known as garden gnomes in the United States and England can be traced to dwarf statues that originated in Germany’s Black Forest region around the early 19th century. They were initially carved out of wood; by the mid-19th century, they were cast in terra cotta and porcelain. They weren’t a garden fixture, though; they were hand-painted, usually about three feet tall and expensive, so they were intended to be displayed inside as pieces of art.

Although those figures were often depicted in what has become their trademark red conical hats, blue shirts and boots, they didn’t strike lazy or lackadaisical poses. They were gardeners, carpenters, fishermen, even hunters. “To see pictures of gnomes with shotguns kind of took me aback,” says Way, who uncovered such images in old catalogues.

Sir Charles Isham gets credit for bringing the dwarves into Britain and out into the garden, importing a number of them from Germany in the 1840s to decorate his massive rockery garden at Lamport Hall, his estate in Northamptonshire. It wasn’t the most auspicious introduction. “He was extremely eccentric,” Way says. “The fact that the first person that starts collecting them in England is a pro-socialist vegetarian teetotaler who believes dwarfs and little folk are real is not a great way to establish their legitimacy.”

The next ambassador of the small statues was another oddball: Sir Frank Crisp, whose roughly 62-acre estate in Henley-on-Thames, Friar Park, was dotted with German garden gnomes and open to the public in the early 20th century. (George

Harrison of the Beatles bought the property in 1970 and claimed to unearth a few of the original gnomes, which he posed with on the cover of his album “All Things Must Pass.”) Wealthy landowners began adopting the gnomes — as they were commonly called by then

SEE GNOMES, PAGE F10