Welcome to the Long Island Decoy Forum. This blog is dedicated to the great decoys made and used on Long Island the people who carved them, and the preservation of the rich historical roll Long Island played in the "Golden Era" of waterfowling.
Though not a native Long Islander, I have made it my home here for 41 years on It's Historic South Shore. I am a long time decoy carver, collector, researcher, past three-term president of the Long Island Decoy Assoc. and a Contributing Writer for Decoy Magazine.
Long Islanders have used decoys for 10,000 years. But it is those that were produced from roughly the 1840's to 1930 that would be the carvings desired and preserved by collectors starting around the first quarter of the twentieth century to the present.
To any who follow the decoy market today, it is quite evident that over the last decade vintage and not so vintage have achieved astronomical prices. Many have bemoaned these new prices which is understandable. But my concern is not with the so called value of the birds.
My interest is in the carvings themselves and any true history you can discover and document for the birds produced on L.I. and their true makers.
Unfortunately, in the past very little if any research was actually done on the carvings; some attributions were completely fabricated names have been attached to many well-known decoys with no more research that someone saying they were made by John Doe and it has been repeated long enough that it is just accepted as Gospel by collectors, especially the imperishable neophyte.
In the future, I will present much of the research discovered by myself and my research partners on the decoys made here, and why or why we should not use the names being used to day for these birds; Will Southard , T.H. Gelston, John Dilley, Obediah Verity, Bill Bowman and many more.
I hope you will enjoy seeing what we have discovered and feel free to ask any questions you may have or add any information you would have on the great decoys made on the shorebird capital of North America. Jamie
