Monte Palace in Madiera, Portugal dates back to the 18th century when a stunning estate was built. Through the years, the property has gone through several changes of owner, until it was bought by Rodrigues Berardo who set up the Berardo Foundation and turned the estate into the Monte Palace Tropical Garden. The gardens host a variety of exotic plants, as well some lakes with a sophisticated filtering system to give habitat to Koi. However, in my opinion, the piece de resistence of the Monte Palace Gardens is the large collection of Japanese stone lanterns. The Oriental Gardens are a direct expression of Jose Berardo’s trip to China and Japan where he became fascinated by the way of life, history and culture of the East. Two gardens were set up in an attempt to capture a taste of the culture from this trip.

The gardens feature some incredible ornaments – two marble Fo dogs which are actually lions! These are mythical protectors of temples and palaces and common in China. The mouths of these beasts contain a ball which, legend has it brings good luck to anyone who gives the ball one complete turn. Pagodas and Buddhist sculptures abound and there are lakes and waterfalls complete with miniature islands and ornamental bridges and bamboo water hammers which click clack peacefully.

But then, there are also 20 snow-viewing stone lanterns in the gardens which show off some of the fine examples of the various lantern shapes and styles that have been developed through the rich history of the stone lantern.

There are some fine examples of pagoda style lanterns which traditionally serve as memorials to Buddha and honour his life and teachings. It is interesting to note that most pagodas have an odd number of tiers or roofs, which sometimes represent 3 or 5 elements. Also in the collection are some beautiful representations of pedestal lanterns or tachi-doro (lanterns that have a single support pedestal) as well as a fine ashitsuki-doro or legged lantern, which has multiple legs to support it.

Any one of these lanterns would make a fine piece in my garden, but to find 20 in one place is a real boon and brings a real sense of the orient. It is amazing to think that Japanese stone lanterns were once only used in temples to light paths and would have been very expensive to commission. As they spread in popularity, only wealthy tea houses would have been able to afford them and set them up to light paths to their establishments. Then people started adopting the use of stone lanterns in their gardens to make Japanese lantern gardens, possibly completing the effect with a Japanese rain chain. Now, pretty much anyone can buy a Japanese garden lantern of their very own. Back in ancient Japan, the lanterns would have used oil lamps in them to provide light, now of course the oil lamps have been replaced by an electric bulb for the most part. It’s also interesting that the early Japanese lanterns were fairly heavily influenced by Christianity – in fact one of the earliest makers was Christian and even to this day, many Ishidoro have a partially hidden Christian symbol in the lantern chamber. The origins of the Japanese garden lantern are lost in time, but one popular theory is tha the first lantern was made at the beginning of the seventh century by Prince Iruhiko, son of the Emperor Suiko to protect against a gang of thieves nearby a lake in the Kawachi province. Of course there is no way to verify this, but it is a nice story about the beginning of these beautiful objects