A Brief History of Wind Spinners
The key to choosing the appropriate wind spinner has a lot more to do with aesthetics than a lot of people realize. But if you think about it for a moment, it makes sense. After all, garden wind spinners serve almost no practical purpose whatsoever. They're nothing more than lawn ornaments.
It wasn't always that way. Even a brief examination of the history of these types of wind ornaments demonstrates that they were once incredibly utilitarian. After all, the direct descendant is both the windmill and the sail. And between those two, that's an awful lot of human history.
Wind power is nothing to sneeze at. Sure, we derive our electricity these days from other sources. And we certainly power our ships and boats with alternative sources of power - notably fossil fuels. But once upon a time, it was wind all the way. Without it, we weren't going anywhere!
But over time, of course, things changed. And slowly, anything that required wind got smaller and smaller. Eventually, they started to become simply aesthetic in nature. Think of the brightly colored twirler - the whirligig - that children hold up at parade and other festivities on the Fourth of July.
And once somebody figured out that these were attractive and pleasing to look at, it was really just a simple step to start upgrading them. That's where the contemporary wind spinner comes into play. Manufacturers realized that with a little tweaking, they could take the design and make it marginally more complex. Now with the advent of laser cutting, the designs of stainless steel wind spinners have become very intricate.
Colors have been amped up as well. We went from the proverbial red, white and blue - with an occasional gold or silver thrown in there - to a virtual kaleidoscope of colors and paterns. Finding a garden wind ornament that doesn't have blinding or dazzling hues like yellow and red and blue and purple is awfully hard to do.
Once those two elements were put together - design and color - it was a simple thing for spinners to grow in popularity. Homeowners like to put them on their decks and patios. They like to stake them in flower gardens and vegetable gardens, where they can do double duty as ornaments and scarecrows!
It may not be the functional wind-powered unit of history, but there's no arguing that these simple ornaments continue to play an important role in human history.
It wasn't always that way. Even a brief examination of the history of these types of wind ornaments demonstrates that they were once incredibly utilitarian. After all, the direct descendant is both the windmill and the sail. And between those two, that's an awful lot of human history.
Wind power is nothing to sneeze at. Sure, we derive our electricity these days from other sources. And we certainly power our ships and boats with alternative sources of power - notably fossil fuels. But once upon a time, it was wind all the way. Without it, we weren't going anywhere!
But over time, of course, things changed. And slowly, anything that required wind got smaller and smaller. Eventually, they started to become simply aesthetic in nature. Think of the brightly colored twirler - the whirligig - that children hold up at parade and other festivities on the Fourth of July.
And once somebody figured out that these were attractive and pleasing to look at, it was really just a simple step to start upgrading them. That's where the contemporary wind spinner comes into play. Manufacturers realized that with a little tweaking, they could take the design and make it marginally more complex. Now with the advent of laser cutting, the designs of stainless steel wind spinners have become very intricate.
Colors have been amped up as well. We went from the proverbial red, white and blue - with an occasional gold or silver thrown in there - to a virtual kaleidoscope of colors and paterns. Finding a garden wind ornament that doesn't have blinding or dazzling hues like yellow and red and blue and purple is awfully hard to do.
Once those two elements were put together - design and color - it was a simple thing for spinners to grow in popularity. Homeowners like to put them on their decks and patios. They like to stake them in flower gardens and vegetable gardens, where they can do double duty as ornaments and scarecrows!
It may not be the functional wind-powered unit of history, but there's no arguing that these simple ornaments continue to play an important role in human history.
http://decoratingthewind.com/
