Personal hermits as the forerunners of garden gnomes (11 photos)

A popular garden decoration is cute bearded men in red caps, more common than others - mushrooms, abstract figures and animals. But this funny landscape decor, which appeared only at the beginning of the century before last, has a very interesting history.





In an effort to outdo each other in garden aesthetics, British aristocrats, in addition to grottos, flower beds and ponds, came up with a strange but very common fashion - having personal gnomes. More precisely, hermits, whose role was assigned to the poor and vagabonds.



The duties of the pocket druid included not only living on site in a special house, but also entertaining the host’s guests with both appearance and conversations.





The rest of the time, the druid was required not to shine and remain silent. Even conversations with other servants were prohibited. A special condition was the restriction of hygiene procedures: a person who agreed to play the role of a garden hermit could not wash himself or cut his hair, beard, or nails.





With such strict restrictions, hiring the right employee was a challenge. In fact, the candidate either had to have a certain type of character, or have some kind of mental disorder. Unscrupulous servants often ran away after only a few weeks. Due to the shortage of hermits, the rich resorted to some tricks: they arranged a chapel, cave or grotto as if a person lived there, but he had just left. And they showed it to the guests to be on trend.





It is believed that the starting point was the fashion for ideas of melancholy. Druids became the personification of noir time. And if such an introspective character was present on the owner’s property, then he clearly reflected the mood of the owner himself. Which, accordingly, was very consistent with the fashionable trend of spiritual reflection.

The trend took root for almost two centuries and was relevant on the mainland too. The services of garden druids were used by the Germans and the French. Then, in order not to bother with finding suitable characters, they were replaced by primitive mechanical figures that moved their heads and arms, but while maintaining the surroundings of the home - a laconic couch, a rough table, glasses, an inkwell, a begun manuscript.







Then the mannequins were replaced with ordinary garden gnomes. The popularity of which is not decreasing. Although, taking into account the capricious and flighty lady that fashion is, it cannot be ruled out that someday the trend of pocket hermits will again become relevant among the rich.