The Secret Life of Lawn Ornaments

草坪装饰品的秘密生活

Decoder Ring

历史

2024-07-17

51 分钟
PDF

单集简介 ...

Lawn ornaments are everywhere—but for something so ubiquitous, they’re also mysterious. What’s the person with the flamingo or the gargoyle in their yard trying to say—and why do they want to say it so publicly? From the garden-variety to the not so common, the adorable to the odious—lawn ornaments speak volumes, without saying a word. In this episode, we travel from Germany to England and back home to look at the history and meaning behind three specific lawn ornaments: the garden gnome, the lawn jockey, and the 18th century ornamental hermit. You’ll hear from historian Twigs Way, Sven Berrar of the Zwergstatt Gräfenroda, David Pilgrim of the Jim Crow Museum, Kenneth Goings who is an emeritus professor at the Ohio State University, and art historian Ned Harwood. This episode was written by Evan Chung and Willa Paskin. It was produced by Evan Chung. We produce Decoder Ring with Katie Shepherd and Max Freedman. We had additional production from Cheyna Roth and Martina Weber. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. Thank you to Friedemann Brenneis, Heather Joseph-Witham, and Elise Gramza. If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com. If you love the show and want to support us, consider joining Slate Plus. With Slate Plus you get ad-free podcasts, bonus episodes, and total access to all of Slate’s journalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

单集文稿 ...

  • If you take a walk or a bus ride or a drive.

  • These days, it's hard to miss the signs.

  • I mean, literal signs.

  • It doesn't matter if you're in the city or the suburbs of the country.

  • People have signs in their windows and in their yards telling you in no uncertain terms what they like, what they hate, what they believe.

  • But sometimes, as you're passing someone's house, you see a more ambiguous communication, a message that they maybe couldn't put into words or wouldn't want to anyway.

  • Sometimes you pass a lawn ornament.

  • Some people, they wanna look outside and enjoy the waterfall, or they wanna enjoy, we'll say, an angel.

  • I think every statue that we sell has a reason for people.

  • This is Tatiana Ziegler.

  • She's been a landscape designer for the past 25 years, and she's proprietor of Ziegler's Statuary, a store in North Jersey that sells concrete lawn ornaments of all shapes and sizes.

  • There's trends like during COVID we couldn't keep a Buddha in if we tried.

  • Really.

  • Everything that's from the smallest to the largest sold out immediately.

  • This year has been bares.

  • It's just bears.

  • People come in and you ask them, like, what are you looking for?

  • They're like, well, I don't know.

  • It's like it really has to speak to you.

  • This is Tatiana's daughter Ariana, who works at the shop, too.