Garden gnome history
German people have often kept gnomes, not so much in the garden but around the house because gnome history claims that having a gnome brings good luck and also they help with housework!
The first German mass manufactured garden gnome was made in the 1800s in Thuringia, Germany, and the men who set the gnome craze in process were Griebel and Heissner – Heissner gnomes are still world famous and real collector’s items.
In 1847, Sir Charles Isham built a 90-foot rock garden, an absolutely classic Victorian folly, and decided it lacked personality. Like many British gentlefolk of the time, he spent his summers in Germany where gnomes were porcelain figures confined to the drawing room, along with Dresden Shepherdesses. Isham took his hostesses gnomes out into the garden and a craze was born.
There is a strong folk belief that gnomes are part of the collective unconscious – described in folk tales right across Northern Europe, which is the home of goblins, trolls, leprechauns, elves, fairies and dwarves.
One cousin of the gnome is the Swedish tomte, a benevolent spirit who watched over Swedish farms but would only stay if the farmer was kind to his animals, his family and remembered, every Christmas Eve, to put out a bowl of porridge for him. As small Swedish farms went the way of small farms everywhere, some tomtes moved indoors but others remain in the farmyard, a symbol of luck.
Coming up to date, Gnome Day was celebrated for the first time in 2002 on June 21st and is now a regular feature in more then twenty countries worldwide.
Gnome factory photograph by Simon Groenew, used under a creative commons attribution licence.
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