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get this dinner party started. Ancient

1:09

folklore has it that among the small people

1:11

of the world that was wouldn't group who

1:13

are given charge of everything under the ground.

1:16

They. Had the power to transform

1:19

rocks from one kind to

1:21

another, creating granite, limestone, quartz

1:23

gems. Their tiny lights were

1:25

glimpsed at the darkest of

1:27

mine's They are the gnomes

1:29

and if you listen carefully,

1:32

you can hear them. even

1:34

now. Sparks fly as pickaxes

1:36

strike crystal walls, beards bob

1:38

up and down, red hat

1:40

tosser on heads. Outside

1:43

the sun is shining among the flowers

1:45

of an English garden. More

1:47

gnomes are gathered, some taken

1:49

the lunch or cool drink. But

1:52

wait. She

1:54

quiet. now know who's

1:57

here he comes across the

1:59

lord he's beard as white as

2:01

his sun hat. Old Sir

2:03

Charles Eisham. He looms down to peer

2:05

at the miniature figures like the moon

2:07

bending down to earth. He

2:10

smiles at the picturesque scene he has

2:12

created, then pauses, looks

2:15

again. He could

2:17

swear these gnomes have been moving. Hello

2:46

and welcome to After Dark. I'm Maddy.

2:48

And I'm Anthony. And today

2:50

we are talking about garden

2:52

gnomes. Wait, don't go. This

2:56

is not necessarily the history you

2:58

would expect. This is a history

3:00

of spiritualism. It's a history of

3:02

tourism and kitsch holiday presents. It's

3:05

a history of gardening. And it's a history

3:07

of one man and one

3:09

garden in particular, the inventor, the

3:12

maverick that was Sir Charles Eisham.

3:15

Anthony, before we get into

3:17

the history of garden gnomes and we introduce

3:19

our brilliant guests for today, can

3:21

I ask, do you own any garden gnomes? Do

3:23

you have a garden in fact? There is

3:25

a garden. There are no garden gnomes, however.

3:28

I'll say this. It's not as

3:30

big a thing in Ireland garden

3:32

gnomes as it is in the

3:34

UK. So it's a bit of a foreign one

3:36

to me. It's not something

3:38

I know much about, to be honest. It's funny

3:40

that you say you think garden gnomes

3:42

are more present in the UK

3:45

because the only garden gnome I can think

3:47

of in pop culture is the garden gnome

3:49

that belongs to the dad in the French

3:52

film Amelie that she steals When

3:54

he's lonely and sad and living a very

3:56

small insular life. And she sends it with

3:58

a friend. I think he's... The As

4:00

Death all around the world and gets

4:02

the ice does to photograph it outside

4:05

of I think the pyramids Eiffel Tower,

4:07

whatever dazzled haven't been impressive. What is?

4:09

she's already. In front of guess. It's

4:11

they who I I feel it's time

4:13

to introduce is the wonderful tweaks. way.

4:16

Tweaks is a god and historians. She's

4:18

a writer many books including and must

4:20

be set a book on garden names

4:22

so tweaks welcomed after dark. Thank you

4:24

for having me for people. Who don't

4:26

know what exactly is the

4:28

garden know? Ah well, yes,

4:30

that is just how long

4:33

is this. sort of you

4:35

have people nowadays. What is a

4:37

garden gnome? They are all fairly

4:39

certain about things. like it's quite

4:41

small. It it's in the garden.

4:43

It's. Either usually made of resin,

4:45

sometimes pottery still and is. They

4:48

usually talk about a white beard

4:50

and a pointy hats that's easily

4:52

green nowadays. At Slate Muesli not a

4:55

people will stop. Hi I'm talking

4:57

about see gnomes and adjacent

4:59

flamingos and all sorts of

5:01

other the a small. Strange.

5:04

Accoutrements as the dollar This,

5:07

but it is historically. They.

5:09

Had a much narrower definition than

5:11

we do now in many ways.

5:14

Basically, I would just described them

5:16

as smooth call a full strength

5:18

to choose. And I

5:20

use the statue were it's deliberately.

5:23

That. We have in our gardens and that

5:25

really sums it up. Just think of them

5:28

is another form of such is. So.

5:30

We're going to go to one particular

5:32

gotten the gotten off settles I said

5:34

if the nineteenth century gotten not to

5:37

garden gnomes have a history that begins

5:39

in the nineteenth century with her for

5:41

months the at the beginning of this

5:44

episode that they have folklore elements and

5:46

they are thought to be real beings

5:48

and these the sense that she's maybe

5:50

represent them. how far back does this

5:53

history of says the coal object gnomes

5:55

go. Well. As a.

5:57

know we've read

5:59

talking the 19th

6:01

century and we are talking you know Sir Charles

6:04

Isham's garden in many ways. But don't forget they

6:06

actually come over in terms

6:08

of small figurines. They actually

6:11

originate both in Germany where

6:13

they're called dwarfs rather than

6:16

gnomes. So they actually change

6:18

their kind of nomenclature, they change their

6:20

title as they literally cross the

6:22

border. They're sold as dwarfs, small

6:25

painted terracotta dwarfs in

6:28

Germany. But as soon as they sort of

6:30

cross the border into England, we call them

6:32

gnomes. Even if later on

6:34

they're part of Snow White and the Seven

6:36

Dwarfs and you bought all of the Seven

6:38

Dwarfs and you bought Snow White, as soon

6:41

as you put them in the garden we

6:43

start calling them garden gnomes. So we've got

6:45

this kind of strange duality to them. So

6:48

that kind of form that's coming over as

6:51

dwarfs from Germany handmade very

6:53

extensively does come over in

6:55

the mid 19th century

6:58

mainly. But they in turn are

7:00

based on earlier carved wooden

7:03

dwarfs in the middle

7:05

of Germany, the kind of mid area

7:08

around Bavaria. And they themselves have a

7:10

folkloric element. So they're based on what

7:12

were believed to be real little folk

7:14

who, and I love that Anthony

7:17

is kind of, you can still hear them

7:19

down the mines because that's what they were

7:21

based on. They were based on little folk

7:23

that were meant to help down the mines.

7:25

That's why you've got a pointy hat. It

7:27

means that you've got early warning if your shaft

7:30

is kind of bowing. So your

7:32

little pointy hat would have a pad

7:35

in the top of it as a

7:37

kind of safety helmet. It's

7:39

interesting that they are workers,

7:42

that they're depicted as workers, miners. And

7:45

later on we'll see in Charles Isham's

7:47

iteration of the gnome. They do various

7:49

different jobs. And there's

7:51

something there about the working class

7:53

in the 19th century, which I think we can

7:55

get into. Who is Charles Isham?

7:57

I think it's time to introduce him.

8:00

Thomas' The. Figure is either

8:02

shells I see my within, she is him

8:04

and I'm getting it's who says as the

8:06

most unlikely. Aristocrat that you could

8:08

possibly imagine. As the mid

8:10

nineteenth century said he is

8:12

the only not wouldn't inherited

8:14

of lumpur whole in northamptonshire

8:16

somebody seat but he wasn't

8:18

than normal currency land owner

8:21

of the time and in

8:23

a way he was a

8:25

bit of an unfortunate mans

8:27

be the first to introduce

8:29

gnomes because it's been very

8:31

hard taken seriously as since

8:33

since house was. A. Vegetarian

8:35

very unusual in those days.

8:37

he was an see something

8:39

we didn't a damn well

8:41

with the country communicates. He

8:43

was a spiritualist. he believed

8:45

very sadly and spirits listen

8:47

as and talk about. He

8:50

was a T Tesla as well,

8:52

which is a very interesting ones. Remember

8:54

when you look at some of his

8:57

writings. Which rule to do is seeing

8:59

the same lose in the garden and a

9:01

house seeing little site and take to the

9:03

wolves. The name is what he called an

9:05

extension of off Battles It's and I think

9:08

at this point we should family. Remember

9:10

the he was. T Total A So

9:12

in all of those kind of ways,

9:14

he really didn't see teen. With.

9:17

The rest of the country house set. so

9:19

what was it? Exactly them That made

9:21

him go from this maverick slightly

9:23

in his own class system at

9:25

the time. It nice to them

9:27

placing some garden gnomes in Iraq

9:30

curry. What was that link for

9:32

him? With. A mint I guess

9:34

who is that? where? Things he does have

9:36

in common with a lot of the upper

9:38

classes at size, and indeed some. People who

9:40

could afford it was a fascination

9:43

with Alpine phone saying an Alpine

9:45

horticulture. So this is a period

9:47

when a lot of people, a

9:49

lot of. People. Who can

9:51

afford at upper middle class? His

9:54

upper classes are traveling sue Six

9:56

Lens traveling to Germany Either going

9:58

on outlined would. the kind of

10:01

tour of the old tour of Italy that

10:03

people used to do around the classic sites

10:05

that kind of fallen out of favor for

10:07

various reasons and we're all into going for

10:09

healthy alpine walks. On

10:11

those healthy alpine walks you

10:14

get involved in alpine botany and

10:16

this becomes a huge fashion of

10:18

the period and Sir Charles

10:20

Isham and another gentleman who also

10:23

took up gnomes, Sir Frank Chris

10:25

become very involved in that alpine

10:27

horticulture. I mean we're really not

10:29

thinking of kind of small

10:32

suburban gardens with you know

10:34

little rocks, you know forget anything

10:36

that was in your grandparents garden

10:38

as a kind of small clinker

10:40

rockery and a collection of you

10:42

know bits and pieces. We are

10:44

talking rockeries that take up you know

10:46

areas about 30 meters, 30, 40 meters in

10:50

length by 20 meters high. In

10:52

the case of Sir Frank Chris you

10:55

know it was simply measured in acres

10:58

and you would paint the top

11:00

of your little rockery in white

11:02

so that it looked like the Matterhorn

11:04

for example and Sir Charles Isham

11:06

who had collected together a

11:08

series of little porcelain figures

11:10

whether he initially called them

11:12

dwarves or gnomes and we don't know

11:15

when he first bought them and

11:17

these were originally placed inside his

11:19

house and we know that from

11:21

something he mentions because he said they

11:24

were used as dinner card holders, matchbox

11:26

holders, you know all of these little

11:28

porcelain figures that he'd bought and he

11:31

must have looked at them one day

11:33

and thought to himself well you

11:35

know if you put these in

11:37

the rockery not only would they

11:39

be back in their natural environment

11:42

of rockiness but they would also

11:44

make my rockery look even bigger than it is because

11:47

they're lots of little figures and so

11:49

lo and behold out he

11:51

goes onto the rockery with some porcelain

11:53

figures and we know that some of

11:55

those early porcelain figures they really had

11:57

just been used on the dark side.

12:00

dining table and, you know, putting

12:02

glass cases around the living room,

12:04

so to speak. Although his later

12:06

ones are purpose-made garden gnomes. So

12:08

we've got a trade in Germany

12:10

by then he's bringing in purpose-made

12:12

garden gnomes. So that's

12:14

how it happens, literally,

12:16

a coincidence of Alpine

12:18

horticulture and a love

12:21

of folklore and a belief

12:23

in little folk. So one of

12:25

our favourite pastimes on After Dark

12:28

is for us to describe an image that relates

12:30

to the topic we're talking about. So I know

12:32

you won't necessarily have this image in front of

12:34

you, but I think you might be quite familiar

12:36

with it. Maddy, I'm going to

12:38

pass over to you as our resident

12:40

art historian. We have two pictures of

12:43

Isham's gnomes. Give

12:45

us a little insight into what's happening in both of these images.

12:48

OK, so image number one is a

12:51

photograph, obviously a black and white photograph being

12:53

in the, I presume, the late

12:55

19th century this has been taken.

12:57

There's Rocky outcrop and sort of

12:59

rocky landscape in the foreground. There

13:03

are three garden gnomes all

13:05

in working clothes. They've got little

13:08

trousers and boots on and kind of

13:10

what I assume are white shirts. Maybe

13:12

they're painted some bright colours. One's

13:14

got his hands in his pockets, another

13:17

one standing with his hands on his

13:19

hips, and one is sitting down having

13:21

a rest. And all around them are

13:23

the tools of the work they're doing.

13:26

So there's some spades alongside. There are

13:28

upturned wheelbarrows that have been discarded by

13:30

these gnomes who have stopped

13:32

work. And in the centre of the

13:34

image, there's a little ladder and there's

13:37

a post with a big sign that

13:39

they've obviously climbed at the ladder and

13:41

erected. And on the sign it says

13:43

eight hours sleep, eight hours

13:45

play, eight hours work, eight

13:48

shillings pay, which I absolutely love. And I

13:50

think that's quite good wellness advice in terms

13:52

of the eight hours sleep. The eight hours

13:54

play and the eight hours work was always

13:56

the advice that you hear, isn't it? The

13:58

next photo is an asymptomatic photo. similar scene.

14:00

It's another part of the Rockery of course. And

14:03

we've got the gnomes here. There's, oh

14:05

gosh, one, two, three, four, five, six,

14:08

seven, eight. I can see eight gnomes.

14:10

There may be more hidden in there

14:12

somewhere. And they look like

14:14

they're engaged in mining or quarrying rock.

14:17

Loads of them have got pickaxes. They're

14:19

very, very much the dwarves from Snow

14:21

White. There's one that's climbed up a

14:23

little ladder. There's others sitting around having

14:26

their lunch, I guess. And it's a

14:28

really quaint scene. And

14:30

the way that Aisham has arranged these, there

14:33

is something really captivating about them. You get a sense

14:35

of liveliness. You can

14:37

see why this would be

14:39

fun and appealing for

14:41

people coming to visit the garden. How

14:43

does Matty's description match up, Twigs? How

14:45

does that sit with what Aisham was

14:47

trying to achieve? Does that ring true

14:50

to you that these are the little

14:52

scenes that he was trying to create?

14:54

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, he's

14:56

making these scenarios,

14:58

these scenes. So

15:01

he's not just dotting them around.

15:03

So as the popularity

15:06

of garden gnomes increases in

15:08

this country, we do

15:10

sometimes happen just dotted around. But

15:12

actually early photographs of garden gnomes,

15:15

both at Lamport Hall Rockery,

15:17

but also at some other

15:20

fairly upper class gardens, as they were then, because

15:22

they were quite expensive when they first came in,

15:25

you know, they are making them

15:27

into little scenes. There's another site

15:29

where they're playing bowls. And

15:31

it's almost the same as you

15:34

did see more than you see now in

15:37

suburban gardens, where one will be fishing

15:39

and the other one is, you know,

15:41

playing cards around a toadstool and that

15:43

kind of thing. And so they're making

15:45

little scenes with them. But I think

15:47

Aisham, perhaps more than others, is having

15:50

them involved in what he

15:52

thinks they are traditionally doing.

15:55

He's kind of almost capturing them,

15:57

a still of what

16:00

he feels he would

16:02

see them naturally doing. And that is

16:04

the difference between what he's doing and what other

16:06

people are doing with the gnomes. I

16:09

suppose one of the key elements of

16:11

gnomes, whether they're folkloric

16:14

creatures or these little porcelain

16:16

figures or wooden figures, is

16:19

the fact that they're meant to be mischievous

16:21

and there's this playing around of liveliness and

16:23

them being inanimate objects. The idea that they're

16:25

moving just out of your line of vision

16:27

and if you look at them they'll suddenly

16:29

freeze a bit like they're toys in, I

16:32

don't know, a toy story or something. There

16:34

is actually a children's story about gnomes who

16:36

do things when you don't look at them.

16:38

And that was a familiar children's thing. Children

16:40

would go out into the garden and move

16:43

gnomes around. Or the adults

16:45

would do them for them and say,

16:47

oh look, gnomes have moved since yesterday.

16:49

Well people do that with Elf on

16:51

the Shelf now at Christmas time, don't

16:53

they? So it's an ongoing tradition. But

16:55

for Charles Isham, we know that he's

16:57

a spiritualist. I think I read somewhere

16:59

that he believed he was getting letters

17:01

from a being on Jupiter or something

17:04

like that. He's very much open to

17:06

these ideas that the world is not

17:08

quite how it seems. For

17:10

him, are the gnomes real? He

17:12

says of gnomes

17:14

in general, as dwarves,

17:17

in the quote he's calling them

17:19

dwarves, he said that if there

17:22

weren't such a real

17:24

folk as dwarves, he

17:27

would not have put his

17:30

little figures on the rockery. He

17:33

said it is only because he

17:35

firmly believed. And he writes a

17:37

lovely little pamphlet called Notes on

17:39

Gnomes and Remarks on Rock Gardens.

17:42

And then if you flip it over, it's beautiful.

17:44

It's like somebody's school book from the 1970s where

17:46

you've done all kind of crazy writing over the

17:48

back and front. At least I did. And if

17:50

you flip it over, it

17:54

actually has a big title, Remarks on Rock

17:56

Gardens and Notes on Gnomes. Anyway, and in

17:58

that he says if there was... If

18:00

I did not believe that there

18:02

were such things as gnomes and

18:04

dwarves and that they have been

18:06

well-documented down mines and in miners'

18:09

cottages, I would not

18:11

have put a representation of them

18:13

on my rockery." And he

18:15

said, there is enough evidence now, and I'm

18:18

going to quote this, he says, "...seeing

18:20

such things is no longer

18:23

an indication of mental delusion,

18:25

you know, in today's

18:27

world, but rather an extension of

18:30

faculty." So he really

18:32

firmly believes in them. That's

18:34

quite interesting if we are to take

18:36

into consideration his belief in spiritualism and

18:38

the spiritual world, right? Yes, yes.

18:41

I mean, this is where it's coming

18:43

from. So his attitude towards these is

18:45

different to the attitude of the vast

18:47

majority of people who will then go on.

18:50

Even in the couple of decades following

18:52

Aisham, people like, I've already

18:54

mentioned Sir Frank Christ, for example, you

18:57

know, who will put gnomes not even

18:59

necessarily on their rockery, but on their lawn or

19:01

on their pond or whatever. But

19:03

for Aisham, it is

19:05

that they are representations

19:08

of what he firmly believes

19:10

are real figures, of real

19:12

little beings. We've

19:14

touched upon Aisham's belief systems

19:16

there when you're talking about the gnomes

19:19

and that he thinks that potentially they

19:21

are beings. How

19:23

does that link to his involvement in

19:25

the world of spiritualism then? Because he's

19:27

not just somebody who's passively involved in

19:30

this, he's actively on the ground really

19:33

trying to push for this belief in

19:36

other worlds and other worlds, other beings that

19:38

are around us. But you talked earlier about

19:40

this idea of being able to perceive those

19:42

things. He thought that was key. So I'm

19:44

just trying to get a mind frame that

19:46

this man is coming to gnomes and everything

19:48

else in his life with. Yes,

19:50

I think that he's very embedded

19:52

in that world and quite early

19:55

on to that world of spiritualism,

19:57

that world of mesmerism as

19:59

early as. 1850s, he's

20:02

becoming involved in, so he

20:04

defends one of the people that

20:06

comes over from America, a

20:08

spiritualist medium who is

20:10

championed by Charles Isham.

20:13

And then by the 1870s, he's

20:16

actually on the council of

20:18

the British National Association of

20:20

Spiritualists when it's established

20:22

in 1873, alongside by the way its

20:25

members included people like Sir Arthur

20:28

Coughlin Doyle, of course, who was

20:30

famously a believer in spiritualism. And

20:33

he also writes the spiritualist

20:35

journal and he writes on mesmerism.

20:38

So Healing by Hand and Will, he

20:40

writes in 1862. So

20:43

he is absolutely embedded in that. It's

20:45

not just on the fringes of

20:48

spiritualism. He firmly believes in

20:50

communicating with other worlds, the power

20:52

of mesmerism, as he says, by

20:54

hand and by will. So

20:56

he's got this quite early on in his life

20:58

and this is running side by

21:01

side whilst he's developing

21:03

the rock garden and whilst he's

21:05

putting gnomes on it. You know, they don't follow

21:08

one from the other necessarily. He's doing it at

21:10

the same time. And we know that because we

21:12

know when the gnomes came onto the rockery

21:14

and we have them actually reported on in

21:16

things like the Gardener's Chronicle, for example, when

21:18

they talk about the rockery in the 1870s

21:21

at the high point of his spiritualism.

21:23

Just as a follow up question then,

21:26

did that cause him any reputational damage?

21:28

Because we know with Sir Arthur Coughlin

21:30

Doyle, for instance, that did call into

21:32

question in some quarters what he was

21:35

doing with his spiritualism. Did the same

21:37

happen for Aysham? I

21:39

think to be honest with Aysham,

21:41

he was probably so far out

21:44

of the norm for most of

21:46

the country landowners at the time

21:48

that it probably wasn't going to cause

21:50

any further issues. I think

21:53

probably the answer is no. He was

21:55

already eccentric enough. Yeah, how much eccentric

21:57

can you actually add? His

22:00

same eccentric though, he was very well regarded

22:03

amongst the horticultural community.

22:05

I mean he really did

22:07

very good work on alpine

22:09

planting and horticulture. That

22:12

rock garden was reported on

22:14

with or without gnomes through

22:16

the 1870s and into the 1890s and

22:19

the Lamport Hall itself and its gardens

22:22

reported in Country Life when it first comes.

22:25

The gnomes gradually become less and less

22:27

praised through the kind of gardening

22:30

periodicals. They obviously fall

22:33

out of favour and gnomes generally actually

22:35

take a complete slide by the

22:37

beginning of the 20th century. I

22:40

wonder if one of the reasons for

22:42

the gnomes being discounted by this community

22:45

is because they are quite

22:47

kitsch and they are collectible

22:49

items that anyone presumably at the end

22:52

of the 19th century can buy if

22:54

they go to places like Germany and

22:56

Switzerland. That they become mass

22:59

produced and that they are affordable and

23:01

therefore they're not exclusive

23:03

or elevated elements of a garden

23:06

design. That happens

23:08

quite late on. So by

23:10

the time we're in the first

23:12

decade of the 20th century we're

23:14

still talking largely hand produced,

23:17

hand moulded, hand painted

23:19

terracotta gnomes from a fairly

23:21

restricted location in Germany. So

23:24

the real fall in

23:27

price and the

23:29

real kind of association with

23:31

kitsch doesn't come

23:33

until certainly late

23:35

into war period when

23:38

they're more mass produced. It's when we sort

23:40

of cut ties with the hand produced,

23:42

hand painted ones from Germany that

23:45

they sort of tumble down the social

23:47

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by 2023, Jefferson's Bourbon Company, Christm

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would continue. Join us this month on Gone

25:04

Medieval Film History Hit. I'm Matt

25:07

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With the help of leading experts,

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25:25

who helped shape a nation. Make

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sure to get every episode by listening

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and following Gone Medieval from History Hit,

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wherever you get your podcasts. The

25:53

year is 2005. iPods

25:56

are the must-have item. Kanye

25:58

West is blowing up. and YouTube

26:00

is now a thing. More

26:03

importantly for our story though, the

26:05

Gnome Liberation Front have been building

26:07

up to something big, and

26:09

then in the spring before anyone expects

26:12

it, they strike. Marianne

26:15

Seveson of Redmond in Washington opened the

26:17

door of her mobile home to find

26:19

a ring binder there. When

26:22

she opened it she found it

26:24

filled with photographs of her beloved

26:26

hand-painted garden gnome. It

26:28

was posed with an Elvis impersonator in

26:30

Las Vegas, relaxing in front

26:32

of the Golden Gate Bridge, being held

26:34

by a waitress in a Hooters bar

26:37

where it was, according to Marianne, appearing

26:39

to have the time of its life.

26:42

Next to the ring binder was a copy

26:44

of People magazine with a post-it note reading,

26:47

Open Me. It opened on

26:50

a page showing a picture of socializing

26:52

TV star of the moment, Paris Hilton.

26:55

In one hand was her iconic chihuahua,

26:58

and the other hand was Marianne's sleepy

27:00

little gnome. Anthony,

27:06

what were you doing in 2005? Did you

27:08

have an iPod? I had an iPod. I

27:11

was very fancy. No, I wanted to be different so

27:13

I got a Sony one. Look how that turned out for me. Oh,

27:16

you were a cool kid. Yeah, I

27:18

had my dad's old 1980s Walkman and

27:20

then I graduated to a purple iPod

27:22

and I thought I was. The

27:24

BZs, eh? The BZs. But it

27:26

wasn't Kanye West on there, it was Shania

27:28

Twain all the way. This gnome

27:31

story is making me think of the Amelie

27:33

film again, a gnome on its journey, this

27:35

idea of it being animated, of it picking

27:37

up and taking off and going across the

27:40

world. I love this and I love that it's

27:42

gone to Las Vegas because where else would a gnome go? To the

27:45

gnome liberation front, what

27:47

is this? Why does it appear? Well,

27:50

no nothing actually, I mean good old gnome

27:52

liberation front, but no nothing dates back to

27:56

1980s and now you're going to have to look

27:58

up, I mean that was Sony Walkmans. Okay. You're

28:00

not just, you're not an athlete, I can tell you it

28:02

was Selly Walkman's, it was an iPod. I

28:04

wasn't there for that. No, absolutely.

28:07

So they claim that one of the earliest gnome

28:09

knapping incidents is in the mid-1980s in Australia. In

28:11

fact, I mean, it has to be, doesn't it?

28:14

If it wasn't going to be Las Vegas, it

28:16

had to be Australia. And

28:18

similarly, again, somebody takes somebody

28:20

else's gnome, takes it away

28:23

on holiday, and in this

28:25

case, apparently returned it with

28:28

having used some kind of brown

28:30

polish on its face to give it

28:32

a suntan. You would have thought an

28:34

Australian garden gnome had sufficient suntan, but there you

28:36

are. So an ever since

28:39

then, gnome knapping kind of bubbled

28:41

under, so to speak. So as

28:43

you say, the 2001 Amelie film, where

28:46

she gets an air hostess friend

28:48

to fly around the world. And

28:51

it's just this idea of liberating the

28:53

gnomes from where they are. And they've

28:55

variously been put on places, you know,

28:58

like roundabouts. People have collected all the

29:00

gnomes from a town and put them

29:02

on a, you know, out of town

29:05

roundabout. But yes, so liberating the gnomes

29:07

from their kind of static

29:10

scene in a garden. I'm sure Charles

29:12

Eiten would actually approve of that. Yeah,

29:15

I was going to say it speaks back

29:17

to Aisham's interest in workers' rights and making

29:20

these little jokes about the gnomes with their

29:22

eight hours of work and play, you know,

29:24

life balance. And you were meeting. Yeah,

29:27

exactly. Yes, it seems to be a

29:29

continuation of that. And it's interesting that

29:32

it comes in in the 80s and

29:34

90s actually, particularly in Britain, thinking about

29:36

the miners' strikes and a real focus

29:38

on the working class and working conditions

29:40

as well. And it's maybe happening not

29:44

as potentially a direct result of that,

29:46

but certainly in that climate, in that

29:48

culture of thinking more about mining and

29:50

workers in that context. I don't know

29:53

how. Well, I suppose people do think

29:55

about them as miners. Yeah. So many

29:57

gnomes that, particularly in the the... 80s

30:00

you were still getting that hangover of your gnome

30:02

looked like something that would come out

30:04

of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves

30:06

rather than looking like the traditional gnome

30:09

which is modelled on a

30:11

fairly rugged looking miner, a

30:13

realistic looking little folk. The

30:16

ones from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves which

30:18

we still have that kind of appearance in gnomes

30:20

if you go down to the garden centre

30:23

today, it's all kind of very

30:25

infantilised, you know, chubby cheeks, bulbous nose,

30:27

that kind of thing. Twigs, before we

30:29

go, I'd be really interested to, if

30:31

we could just leave Charles Eishin behind

30:33

just for a second. I'd

30:36

love to know your opinion as a garden historian

30:38

about why people

30:40

now are intrigued

30:43

by garden gnomes as an ornament

30:45

even. What is it about the

30:48

garden gnome that people want to

30:50

have in their suburban front gardens?

30:52

What is that? Well

30:54

it's really strange you should ask that because every

30:56

few years I get phoned

30:58

up by a rush of, you

31:01

know, newscasters or whatever and

31:03

I'm suddenly confronted with the question, you

31:06

know, the latest statistics are that 85% of

31:08

people now hate garden gnomes and wouldn't dream

31:10

of having one and sales have gone right

31:13

down and so I'll answer any questions about

31:15

that and talk about the history of garden gnomes. And

31:17

then literally it'll be on a cycle

31:20

I would say of anything between three

31:22

and five years. I will then get

31:24

phoned up by people who say, wow,

31:26

garden gnome sales have gone through the

31:28

roof, everybody wants a garden gnome, what

31:31

is it about garden gnomes? They

31:33

are so cyclical in terms

31:36

of love and hate. I don't

31:38

know whether it's a generational thing. Certainly

31:40

in the 90s, when we were

31:42

talking about was this connecting

31:45

to working classes and a minor

31:47

strike and things like that, in

31:49

the 90s and early 2000s there

31:51

were a lot of advertisements that make

31:53

use of gnomes. Now if you can think

31:55

back, and we probably are, we're not quite as

31:57

far back as the 90s, but you know I'm

31:59

not sure. Amelie and the Travelocity Gnome.

32:01

Does anybody even remember the travel... some

32:03

of your listeners will remember the Travelocity

32:05

Gnome from the early years of the

32:08

internet. And that was used

32:10

to advertise travel, basically. The gnome popped

32:12

up everywhere. So it was like a

32:15

meeting of the early internet, advertisements,

32:17

travel and gnome napping, all kind

32:19

of wrapped up. And then Boden

32:22

clothing, who are still around, they

32:24

used gnomes for a couple of

32:26

seasons as well as a sort of kitsch way

32:29

into advertising clothing. Yes, they used

32:31

to have them in their window

32:33

displays. They did. I remember. Yes,

32:35

a Doctor Gnome. A Doctor Boden

32:38

Gnome it was. And at the

32:40

same time, and it even seems

32:42

like fire trap clothing, which was

32:44

a lot more edgy than

32:46

Boden. Sorry, Boden. But you

32:49

know, they had a kind of a

32:51

range of gnomes dressed in kind of

32:53

ninja clothing or, you know, entirely black

32:56

with grids around their faces and stuff

32:58

like that. Really dramatic gnomes. So

33:00

the gnomes kind of come to be

33:03

used in all sorts of different ways,

33:05

not just the traditional gnome. And

33:07

we probably shouldn't get into naughty gnomes, which

33:09

arrived in the 1990s. Up

33:12

until then, gnomes really kept their

33:14

clothes on. Now there

33:16

is just no stopping them. So

33:19

they've been used in all sorts of ways

33:21

in advertising as well. And I think that

33:23

means that they reinvent themselves. They

33:26

change. I'm talking to you, so they're real

33:28

little folk. Ah, they've got to me.

33:31

So yeah, they kind of reinvent

33:33

themselves all the time. Here we

33:35

are, these helpful mining figures. And

33:37

here we are, mischievous dwarves. And

33:39

now here we are being kind

33:42

of kitsch friendly, doing the gardening,

33:44

raking up. I don't know if

33:46

you've noticed, but all those mining

33:48

tools promptly became gardening tools, of course.

33:51

So that's why they've got rakes and shovels

33:53

and wheelbarrows, because they started off in mines.

33:55

Whereas now, God knows what

33:57

they've got in their hands nowadays. They're

33:59

just... reinventing themselves all the time.

34:01

And I think this accounts for the

34:03

way they kind of go in

34:05

and out of fashion as we reinvent

34:07

them. I can't wait to see what they

34:10

do next. Twigs, finally, before we go, I

34:12

can't speak to a garden historian whose name

34:14

is Twigs and not ask, was

34:16

that nominative determinism? Did you always want

34:18

to be a garden historian? No,

34:21

I'm going to really disappoint you. I used to

34:23

be an archaeologist and then I got into

34:25

landscape archaeology and then I kind

34:27

of drifted, so to speak, and

34:30

ended up in what was called garden

34:32

history, really. But nowadays we really call

34:35

it the history of designed

34:37

landscapes and gardens.

34:39

But I always wonder if people like

34:41

Bob Flowerdew and Pippa Greenwood,

34:44

did Bob Flowerdew really want to be, I don't

34:46

know, a civil engineer or something like that?

34:50

And they just wouldn't take him seriously? I

34:52

don't think so. You know, it's a nice

34:54

thought, isn't it? It certainly is. Thank

34:56

you so much, Twigs, and thank you everyone for

34:58

listening to this episode of After Dark. You can

35:00

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