So, who is the Green Man? Well, there’s no easy answer to that. Although the term itself wasn’t coined until 1939, the Green Man has been around us for centuries. Entire books have been written about him.
The Green Man is a decorative motif dating back to ancient times. Its origin is muddled. It is sometimes in reference to a religious figure and sometimes a reference to a pagan figure.
In Mesopotamia and Egypt he represented a god who died and was reborn each year. With his connection to wine and grape leaves the face of Dionysus was represented in Greek art surrounded by grape vines and foliage, often thought to be a basis for the Green Man in ancient Western art. The face also appears in ancient Indian and Middle Eastern art and appears as early as the 4th century in French art. Soon the Green Man developed multiple mythical associations appearing in Wiccan art and religious art everywhere. By the 12th century, motifs showing a human face entirely created of vegetation appeared in Northern European Celtic art becoming a recurring motif through the Dark Ages.
Sometimes it was a representative of the good in man and sometimes the evil. Sometimes it related to man’s connection to the natural world. There is simply no one definition of who the Green Man is. It depends on the source and the context.
One trope that is constant in all art is that people are attracted to images of the human face. It is an evolutionary part of our identity. With this kind of universal presence the decorative arts inevitably accepted him as well.
The motif developed Christian associations with its adoption by the Western church with the vegetation representing the crucifix and foliage meaning resurrection. Representations of the Green Man appear in Medieval Gothic churches throughout Europe.
Wikipedia has this facial trope broken down into three basic types:
- The Foliate Head, which is completely comprised of leaves.
- The Disgorging Head, which spews vegetation from its mouth
- The Bloodsucker Head, which spews vegetation from all facial orifices
The interest in Neo Gothic design spearheaded by Sir Charles Barry and by Augustus Pugin in the middle of the 19th century revived the Green Man from Medieval obscurity and he began to appear in European art and design of all types including ceramics where the potteries of Europe embraced him.
The Green Man pops up unexpectedly in majolica quite often, mostly in Renaissance Revival and Gothic Revival style pieces. It is frequently heavily disguised within a design, so take a look at your collections. If you see a face staring back at you, you now know why he is there and who he is!
