Gnomes, sweet gnomes. Little red caps. Long, flowing beards. Ruddy cheeks, stubby fingers clutching a trowel or a lantern. Eyes twinkling with centuries of wisdom. Mere ornamental statues? Hardly. Here for 2004--which, coincidentally, is being declared "The Year of the Gnome" by the city of Usti nad Labem in the Czech Republic, a town once renowned for its high-quality production of garden gnomes--is the calendar that celebrates the pleasure, the pride, the obsession, the sheer wackiness inspired by these ceramic figures. Their kitschy charm is irresistible. Three stolid elders gathered around a giant mushroom. A pipe smoker lounging on a fallen log. Gnomes in the ferns and the fens, resting on moss or swinging from a tree branch. Gnomes fishing, singing, carting a wheelbarrow, frolicking yes frolicking on the beach. By the mid-1990s, Germany along exported a million garden gnomes a year, to spring up like toadstools in suburban yards, at flea markets, and on eBay. This tongue-in-cheek calendar, lovingly created and photographed by Dietrich Gehrig, weaves the odd yet compelling spell of the garden gnome, month by month.
- ISBN10 0761129960
- ISBN13 9780761129967
- Publish Date 1 August 2003
- Publish Status Out of Stock
- Out of Print 12 December 2008
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Workman Publishing
- Edition 2004 ed.
- Language English