Lawn ornament
Lawn ornaments are decorative objects placed in the lawn, the grassy area of a property. While lawn ornaments are often used singly or multiply in attempts to accent or beautify a lawn, they are often used by others as a gauge of social respectability.
Common lawn ornaments
Bird bath - A generally concave structure designed to hold water for birds to drink and bath in, generally supported above the ground level on some form of pedestal.
Garden gnome - A diminutive but generally colorful gnome statuette. Along with the pink flamingo, garden gnomes are considered tacky by some. Gnome ornaments were even featured in the TV series King of the Hill, and were a prominent subplot in the heavily decorated french independent film Amelie.
Groomsman - A normally diminutive statuette of a black horse attendant dressed in slave clothing, also called a Jocko. Groomsmen were often used as hitching posts. The origin of the groomsman is disputed, but it is accepted that they originated in the U.S. South. One legend has it that the first Groomsman was created at the commission of George Washington.
Kenneth W. Goings, Professor of History at Florida Atlantic University, in his book Mammy and Uncle Mose (Indiana University Press), relates the legend that General Washington wanted to mount a surprise attack on a British encampment during the Revolutionary War. A young black man named Tom Graves wanted to fight but Washington said he was too young and asked the boy to hold a lantern for the troops as they crossed the Delaware. When the troops rowed back after the battle, instead of finding their horses hitched to a post, the reins were in the hands of Graves, who had frozen to death. Washington, moved by the boy’s dedication, ordered a statue made in his honor. Goings notes that in some versions of the legend, the black boy who died was actually Graves’ son, "Jocko," which then became a common name for the statues.
A 5' tall Groomsman dating from the mid-1800s is located in the lobby of Temple University’s Sullivan Hall.
Human form - A dimensional depiction of a human being. Human form lawn ornaments can be two dimensional, generally vertically supported by being thrust in the ground, or three dimensional. Examples of human form lawn ornaments include the lawn jockey and groomsman. Examples of two dimensional human form lawn ornaments include renditions of Amish and Pennsylvania Dutch people. A variation of the Pennsylvania Dutch depiction is a depiction of an older female bending over as in gardening, thus revealing her undergarments.
Jocko - See Groomsman.
Lawn Jockey - A normally diminutive statuette in the form of a black horse jockey. While no longer as common since the civil rights movement as they once were, they once were a fairly common lawn and garden decoration. The origin of the lawn jockey is disputed, but it is generally accepted that it evolved from the earlier Groomsman.
Charles Blockson, historian, author, and curator of the Afro-American Collection at Temple University in Philadelphia, stated "These statues were used as markers on the Underground Railroad throughout the South into Canada, Green ribbons were tied to the arms of the statue to indicate safety; red ribbons meant to keep going."
Mirror ball - A spherical light-reflective object, often of almost any size up to 16" in diameter and generally displayed on top of a support structure.
Pink Flamingo - A generally lifesize replica of a pink flamingo. Although they can be realistically three dimensional in form, often they are basically two dimensional. The pink flamingo is probably the standard cliché of a tacky lawn ornament. According to some, the origin of the pink flamingo was in 1946 with the company Union Products in its "Plastics for the Lawn" product line. Their collection included dogs, ducks, frogs, and a flamingo.
Whirligig - An often anthropomorphic or animalistic sculpture generally supported vertically by being pushed in the ground characterized by at least one rotating member often desiged to appear as a bodypart of the sculpture.
Further reading
- Goings, Kenneth W., Mammy and Uncle Mose: Black Collectibles and American Stereotyping (Indiana University Press) (1st printing, 1994).
- Varkonyi, Charlyne, A Bird in the hand: The Story of the Pink Flamingo, Sun-Sentinel (date unknown) (FL).