Where does the tradition of lawn gnomes come from?

Question

And why are flamingos also popular lawn decor?

Answer 1

Garden gnomes beached on the shores of England in 1847, when a Sir Charles Isham ("of Lamport Hall") built a 90-foot rock garden and decided his construction needed animating characters. He went off to Germany, where gnomes were largely porcelain figures confined to the drawing room. Isham took them outside, "grouping them into scenarios, with signs and tableaus of striking miners. Isham was a spiritualist, and believed that his figures represented the gnomes of the spirit world."

Isham may have been on to something. Gnome theorists believe that gnomes are part of the collective unconscious. They are most thick on the ground in Northern Europe, the home of goblins, trolls, leprechauns, elves, fairies and pygmy miners (and let's not forget those hobbits).

But the "purest" 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 to eat." As small Swedish farms went the way of small farms everywhere, some tomtes moved inside and became Christmas-card fodder for Swedish artists. But many remain in the yard, a symbol of luck

I guess the flamingo's would be a bit of Paradise brought to your own backyard.????

Answer 2

Experts Revise Theory on Origin of Garden Gnomes

The popular garden gnome may not have originated in south Thuringia as previously believed. The latest research by German gnome historians indicates that they just may herald from a present-day Polish city instead.

Until now, the oldest document pointing to the birthplace of the garden gnome was an 1893 article from the Illustrirte Welt, which seemed to hint that gnome culture had its roots in Thuringia.  

Most experts agree that the ancestors of the modern day garden gnome emerged at the end of the 19th century at one of the three major European centers for the terracotta industry, which in addition to Thuringia, also included the Czech town of Usti nad Labem and present-day Drawno, Poland.

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144...

http://www.dw-world.de/popups/popup_prin...

URLS all indicate a change in the origin

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=origin+...

As for the Pink Flamingos/ Poor taste would be my thought, I live in Missouri and my neighbor has one!

You might be interested in this

Price said the idea of the plastic bird which, when first sold went for $2.76 a pair at Sears and Roebuck, began long before 1957 when it was invented by Don Featherstone in Leominster, Massachusetts.

http://newscafe.ansci.usu.edu/archive/ap...