Inside Decoys from Shelburne Museum

Bluebill drake decoy, 1952-192.194


This hollow decoy is made of 3 pieces of wood: a head, an upper body and a lower baseboard. Although the upper body/baseboard arrangement is similar to the decoys made by Benjamin Holmes, this decoy has no metal fasteners between the baseboard and body. The head is attached from the inside of the body with a single threaded metal fastener. The other fasteners secure a rigging loop under the breast and a teardrop-shaped weight to the underside.

Like the long-tailed hen decoy made by Wheeler, the rear of the neck nestles into the decoy’s back in a manner quite different from those decoys securely attributed to Laing and Holmes. The scalloped shape of the edges of the hollow within the upper body seen in the posterior-anterior image could have been made by a drill bit or a gouge.  However, the stepped shape of the hollow seen in the lateral image suggests use of a drill.

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