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These figurines originate in 19th century Germany, where they became known as Gartenzwerg (literally "garden dwarf"). The application of the term gnome in English is first attested in the 1930s. The first garden gnomes were made in Gräfenroda, a town known for its ceramics in Thuringia, Germany, in the mid-1800s. Philip Griebel made terracotta animals as decorations, and produced gnomes based on local myths as a way for people to enjoy the stories of the gnomes' willingness to help in the garden at night. The garden gnome quickly spread across Germany and into France and England, and wherever gardening was a serious hobby. The manufacturing of gnomes spread across Germany with numerous other large and small manufacturers coming in and out of the business, each one having its own particular style of design. World War II was hard on the industry and most producers gave up then. Griebel's descendants still make them and are the last of the German producers, all others having moved production to Poland or China. Currently, there are an estimated 25 million garden gnomes in Germany. Garden gnomes were first introduced to the United Kingdom in 1847 by Sir Charles Isham, when he brought 21 terracotta figures back from a trip to Germany and placed them as ornaments in the gardens of his home, Lamport Hall in Northamptonshire. Only one of the original batch of gnomes survives: Lampy, as he is known, is on display at Lamport Hall, and is insured for one million pounds. A more recent noteable manufacturer of Garden Gnomes was Tom Major-Ball, father of former UK Prime Minister John Major. Garden gnomes have become a popular accessory in many gardens. They are often the target of pranks, known collectively as gnoming: people have been known to return garden gnomes "to the wild", most notably France's "Front de Liberation des Nains de Jardins" and Italy's "MALAG" (Garden Gnome Liberation Front). Some kidnapped garden gnomes have been sent on trips around the world (the travelling gnome prank; this later became the basis for s "Roaming Gnome"). In 2008, a 53-year-old French man in Brittany was arrested on suspicion of stealing upwards of 170 garden gnomes. It has been suggested by some scholars that the garden gnome is a descendant of the Greco-Roman fertility god Priapus, whose statue was often found in ancient gardens. Gnomes are often depicted as having beards and are typically males, and usually wear red hats and are known to smoke pipes. They are made in various poses and pursuing various pastimes, such as fishing or napping. Gnomes have become controversial in serious gardening circles in the UK, and have been banned from the prestigious Chelsea Flower Show as the organisers claim that they detract from the garden designs. Gnome enthusiasts accuse the organisers of snobbery because they are popular in working class and suburban gardens. Gnomes may be made from terracotta clay slurry poured into molds. The gnome is removed from the mould, allowed to dry, and then fired in a kiln until hard. Once cooled the gnome is painted. More modern gnomes are made from schwau resins and similar materials. A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the display, cultivation, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The garden can incorporate both natural and man-made materials. The most common form is known as a residential garden. Western gardens are almost universally based around plants. A lawn is an area of recreational or amenity land planted with grass, and sometimes clover and other plants, which are maintained at a low, even height. The specialised names turf, pitch, field or green may be used, depending on the sport and the locale. Pointy hats have been a distinctive item of headgear of a wide range of cultures throughout history. Though often suggesting an ancient Indo-European tradition, they were also traditionally worn by women of Lapland, the Japanese, the Mi'kmaq people of Atlantic Canada, and the Huastecs of Veracruz and Aztec (illustrated e.g. in Codex Mendoza). A gnome [nəʊm] is a diminutive chthonic spirit in Renaissance magic, alchemy and in later fantasy fiction. The word is from Renaissance Latin gnomus, a word apparently coined by Swiss alchemist Paracelsus. Paracelsus uses Gnomi as a synonym of Pygmæi. He is perhaps deriving the term from Latin gēnomos (itself representing a Greek γη-νομος, literally "earth-dweller". In this case, the omission of the ē is, as the OED calls it, a blunder. Alternatively, the term may be an original invention of Paracelsus. Paracelsus includes gnomes in his list of elementals, as earth elementals. He describes them as two spans high, and very taciturn. The English word is attested from the early 18th century but it remains obscure until the early 19th century, when it is taken up by authors of Romanticist collections of fairy tales, where it became mostly synonymous with the older word goblin. The chthonic elemental spirit has precedents in numerous ancient and mediaeval mythologies, often guarding mines and precious underground treasures, notably in the Germanic dwarves and the Greek Chalybes, Telchines or Dactyls. In English folklore the chthonic gnome has become a sort of antithesis to the more airy or luminous fairy. Nathaniel Hawthorne in Twice told tales (1837) contrasts the two in "Small enough to be king of the fairies, and ugly enough to be king of the gnomes" (cited after OED). Similarly, gnomes are contrasted to elves, as in William Cullen Bryant's Little People of the Snow (1877), which has "let us have a tale of elves that ride by night, with jingling reins, or gnomes of the mine" (cited after OED). Franz Hartmann in 1895 satirised materialism in an allegorical tale entitled Unter den Gnomen im Untersberg. The English translation appeared in 1896 as Among the Gnomes: An Occult Tale of Adventure in the Untersberg. In this story, the Gnomes are still clearly subterranean creatures, guarding treasures of gold within the Untersberg mountain. As a figure of 19th century fairy tales, the term gnome by the 20th century became largely synonymous with other terms for the "little people", such as goblin, brownie, kobold, leprechaun, Heinzelmännchen and other instances of the "domestic spirit" type, losing its strict association with earth or the underground world. After World War II (with early references, in ironical use, from the late 1930s) the diminutive figurines introduced as lawn ornaments during the 19th century came to be known as garden gnomes. The image of the gnome changed further during the 1960s to 1970s, when the first plastic garden gnomes were manufactured. These gnomes followed the style of the 1937 depiction of the seven dwarves in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs by This "Disneyfied" image of the gnome was built upon by the illustrated children's book classic The Secret Book of Gnomes (1976), in the original Dutch Leven en werken van de Kabouter. The expression of the "Gnomes of Zürich", Swiss bankers pictured as diminutive creatures hoarding gold in subterranean vaults, was coined in 1956 by Harold Wilson and gained currency in the 1960s (OED notes the New Statesman issue of 27 November 1964 as earliest attestation). The name gnome has been used in the Fantasy genre, typically in a cunning role, e.g. as an inventor. In L. Frank Baum's Oz series, the Nomes (so spelled), especially their king, are the chief adversaries of the Oz people. Ruth Plumly Thompson, who continued the series after Baum's death, reverted to the traditional spelling. In C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia, gnomes, or "Earthmen" as they are sometimes called, live in the Underland, a series of subterranean caverns. Unlike the traditional, more humanlike gnomes, they can have a wide variety of physical features and skin colours. They are used as slaves by the Lady of the Green Kirtle. J. R. R. Tolkien, in the legendarium surrounding his Elves, uses "Gnomes" as a name of the Noldor, the most gifted and technologically-minded of his elvish races, in conscious exploitation of the similarity with gnomic; Gnomes is thus Tolkien's English loan-translation of Quenya Noldor, "those with knowledge". In The Father Christmas Letters, which Tolkien wrote for his children, Red Gnomes are helpful creatures who come from Norway to the North Pole to assist Father Christmas and his Elves in fighting the wicked Goblins. ...