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What is the origin of the garden gnome?
Statues have been a feature of European gardens since at least the Renaissance. Saints, gods and mythical creatures were all depicted, and in the 17th century one particularly popular character was Gobbi, which is Italian for ‘dwarf’ or ‘hunch-back’. The inspiration for the figures of today – small men with beards and pointed hats – can be found in European folklore, which told tales of gnomes, little folk who brought good luck and helped farmers, housewives and miners. In the mid-19th century, companies in Germany began to create porcelain representations of them, which they dubbed Gartenzwerge or ‘garden dwarfs’.