Cairn Studio (thing)

In the late 70's, a book entitled "Gnomes" by Wil Huygen with illustrations by Rien Poortvliet became quite popular. Filled with images of happy woodland gnomes with their tall, red, cone-shaped hats and their white beards, "Gnomes" became immensely popular and spawned a number of other business ventures including the ever-popular garden gnomes seen in many peoples yards and the collectable figures produced by Cairn Studios.

Cairn Studio was founded over twenty five years ago in Davidson, North Carolina by Dr. Tom Clark. Clark, a sculptor, began by creating images similar to those depicted by Poortvliet and casting them a special combination of resins. The resulting figures were extremely popular and Clark's works were soon much in demand. Today, you would be hard pressed to go to any collectibles store without seeing figures from the Cairn Studio.

One of the things that Cairn Studio has done over the years is to create gnomes that would be of interest or good gifts for people of varying careers or backgrounds.

• Is your loved one a postal employee? Then give them a gnome with the image of a postage stamp and a hunting rifle.
• Is your aunt into extreme tatting? Then give her a little lady gnome with a helmet and tatting hook?
• Is you boss a Deadhead and fantasizes about being Long John Silver? Then give him the gnome with the tie-dyed shirt, peg-leg, and stoned parrot.
• Is you new neighbor a hermaphrotitic dominatrix with a penchant for Andy Griffith episodes starring Earnest T. Bass? Well, you get the idea...

Like with most collectables, the gnomes from Cairn studio are introduced each year and available for a limited time before they are discontinued or "retired." This allows for new and interesting gnomes to be created and for the values of the older ones to increase over time.