Seventh Grade students are creating gnomes!  

Love the mustaches!

Things are starting to come together!

A drill hat for those hard mining jobs?

Each gnome, though unique, needs to include certain things:  a hat or head wear and two objects representing the student.

When the gnomes are finished, we will fire and glaze them.  

Short history of lawn gnomes:

Garden statues have been popular since the Renaissance, but many people think of lawn gnomes as a contemporary idea.  Gnomes have been used as decoration since at least the late 18th century when the first ceramic "house gnomes" began to appear.  In 1847 Sir Charles Isham brought back several terra cotta figures from Germany to decorate the gardens at his home Lamport Hall in Northamptonshire.  Among those figures was the oldest known surviving example of a lawn gnome. That gnome, nicknamed "Lampy", is still at Lamport Hall but insured for over a million pounds!  

Gnomes continue to be popular today.  Travelocity famously used the traveling gnome as part of their ad campaign.  The idea of a traveling gnome is based on "gnoming" where a lawn gnome is "kidnapped" then pictures sent back to the owners from the places the gnome "visits".  An animated movie also played on the iconic image - "Gnomeo and Juliet".

Whether considered a treasured part of the garden or total kitsch, gnomes have become an iconic image.

- Miss Tomaso