Socha trpaslíka, Sculpture

Socha trpaslíka is a cast iron sculpture in the spa park of Poděbrady with a movable hammer hand that strikes a metal mushroom to announce the time. The small figure wears a hat and has a round face, standing about 3 feet (1 meter) tall with a rough iron surface.

The figure was created in 1938 after a concept from 1936 when a hydroelectric plant manager visited another town with a similar timepiece and brought the idea back to his colleagues. During communist rule it was removed in 1960 as a bourgeois ornament, but returned to its original spot near the flower clock in 1997.

The figure is a dwarf, not a generic gnome, and its hammer strikes a metal mushroom rather than a bell. It was part of the flower clock from the start: the clock mechanism, built by the hydroelectric plant manager Novotný and colleagues after a visit to Žitava, went up on the colonnade in 1936, and the cast-iron dwarf made by Josef Berounský of Svratka followed in 1938.

The sculpture strikes every 15 minutes throughout the day, so its movements and sounds are easy to notice even though the figure is partially hidden behind the flower clock. The location is freely accessible at any time, though there is little shelter from weather.

The gnome was not destroyed after its 1960 removal: Anna Vodičková kept it at her cottage in Albrechtice through the 1970s and 1980s, and it came back to the park on 9 May 1997. In 2006 it was moved under the nearby weeping willows because it no longer matched the redesigned flower clock, a change that caused disputes among local politicians.