Celtic & Gothic Garden Ornaments & Wall Plaques
We have a growing selection of garden ornaments and memorials, handcrafted in resin and stone. All are suitable for indoors or outdoors...
Search the hidden corners of Scottish, English, French, or German Gothic churches, and you'll often find the Green Man. It's a composite of face and foliage--an image that appears in dozens of forms. Often a face of the Green Man (or Green Woman) is a mask made entirely of leaves; other times the face may be surrounded or transformed by leaves and vines.
They can be found on any surface that's open to ornamentation: corbels, choir stalls, fonts, screens, or roof bosses.
Some of the earliest Green Men have been traced to ancient Rome. In pre-Christian religions, trees were held sacred, forest groves were perceived as the dwelling place of gods, goddesses, and a wide variety of nature spirits.
The Green Man is often perceived as an ancient Celtic symbol. In Celtic mythology, he is a god of spring and summer. He disappears and returns year after year, century after century, enacting themes of death and resurrection, the ebb and flow of life and creativity.
Given the church's condemnation of the old pagan gods, the last place you'd expect to find Green Man is within the Christian places of worship. Nevertheless his face appears again and again. This may be the church's attempt to ward off evil from holy places of worship Perhaps, also, the Green Man was a talisman to encourage new fertility and growth of the church as well as its constituents.
The Green Man has been suppressed and reinvented throughout history. He was banned during the Reformation but appeared on 17th century memorials and is found on 18th century Scottish gravestones. In the Victorian era, The Green Man was used as an architectural motif from Ireland in the west to Russia in the east. At this time he played a major role in church restorations and as a decorative motif on street architecture.
