French group fights to liberate ceramic statues.
J.A. Getzlaff Y ou may not know this, but garden gnomes are all the rage in Paris. The colorful, gaudy gnomes, which some find cute and others find repulsive, were invented in eastern Germany in the 1870s and have become something of a status symbol in French gardens. Last month, Paris' chic Bagatelle gardens opened the country's first exhibit dedicated to the gnomes. The exhibit featured 2,000 of the elfin figures, carefully placed amid the peonies and lilac bushes. And then the Garden Gnome Liberation Front struck.