The Chief Cuffee Fabrication

         
                                      Robert Gerard and the Chief Cuffee Fabrication


In the year 2000 at a Long Island Decoy Collector's Association meeting, decoy collector, carver and researcher, David Bennett, of Springs, East Hampton, Long Island, casually said I don't think Cuffee made those decoys they say he made.  My immediate response was Bob Gerard did the research on the birds and he says Cuffee made them.  Dave then confided I think they were made by a Bonacker from Springs!  Bonackers are descendants of the English who settled around Accabonac Harbor in East Hampton, Long Island.  I told Dave see if you can find some evidence; do some research and I will check out Gerard's research.  The only reason these carving were said to have been made by Eugene "Chief" Cuffee (1866-1941) from the Shinnecock Reservation, Southampton, Long Island, was that Bob Gerard had said they were made by Eugene Cuffee.  Dave's research over the next few years proved without a doubt that the real maker was William Henry (Uncle Henry) Bennett (1867 -1954) from Springs, East Hampton, Long Island, and not by Eugene Cuffee, Southampton.  So what compelled Gerard to say the carvings were made by Eugene Cuffee?  What was his evidence for Eugene Cuffee?  How extensive was Gerard's research?
 
                                                               Robert S. Gerard
                                                                (1922-2007)



Robert Gerard was a decoy collector from East Setauket, Long Island, and he was without doubt a sociopath.  He was one of the most dishonest human beings I can ever remember encountering.  Bob was beyond crooked.  He was the person responsible for putting many re-heads, repaints and fake decoys on the market.  He was totally devoid of any morality.  He just loved ripping people off.
 
Bob was responsible for putting all the Point Pleasant model Wildfowler buffleheads on the market, which he sold as "Jim Van Brunt" decoys with the help of all the auction houses.  These birds were so obviously Wildfowler Decoys.  On Long Island among many collectors, they were a joke, but Bob had money and he bought decoys.  So, when he asked the auction houses to push his phony decoys, the auction houses became his willing partner in deception.  It would amaze me to see in the same auction, one lot listed as a pair of Point Pleasant or Babylon Wildfowler bufflehead decoys, and another lot that was identical in appearance to the aforementioned Wildfowler bufflehead decoys.  The only difference was the paint and these would be cataloged as by Jim Van Brunt from Setauket, Long Island.  These buffleheads always had a small lead pad weight and a typed label tied on with red yarn that said they were made by Jim Van Brunt in the 1950s.  The pattern for the birds came out of Charley Birdsall's Point Pleasant Wildfowler Co. in the 1960s.  Gerard also put out Point Pleasant pattern Wildfowler Company teal.  Gerard sold  these as Quogue Wildfowler teal.  They come complete with an inaccurate fake Quogue stamp which was pounded into the bottom of the bird, not burned in like the real brands were.  These were so obviously fakes and so obviously Point Pleasant Wildfowler decoys. There is no way the auction houses didn't know that they were completely bogus decoys.  So why did the auction houses fence Bob's fakes for him?  Because Bob spent a lot of money with those auction houses.  The auction houses gave him a wink, wink, nod, nod for the money that Bob gave them.



Bob Gerard really was not a expert on Long Island decoys or on any decoys for that matter.  As a matter of fact, he was one of the least knowledgeable decoy collectors I have every met.  Many collectors, dealers and members of the LIDCA despised him.  Bud Ward's animosity toward him was legendary.  They nearly came to blows once at a LIDCA meeting.  Bud had to be held back.  Ronnie McGrath, once a protégé of Bud Ward, also despised Bob Gerard.  Ronnie once told me of an encounter he had with Gerard where Ronnie told Gerard you're a mean old man, you know nothing about decoys, and nobody likes you.  Ronnie said that Gerard just laughed.  Ronnie told me Gerard knew what he had said was true, but Gerard didn't care because Bob knew there was a constant stream of suckers coming along who would buy his line of B.S. and his bad birds.



When people would ask me to look at birds they bought from Bob, I found most weren't right, and I would say in my opinion the bird is not right and tell them why I thought so, and advise them to return the bird to him. When someone would show me Bob's Point Pleasant Wildfowler fake Van Brunt's or his fake Quogue teal, I would not say it was my opinion, but would tell them they had bought fakes from Gerard and to go and get your money back, and if he gives you a problem, tell him I said they were fakes.  Generally, Gerard gave the money back no questions ask, but he always maintained that there was nothing wrong with them.



Bob put many fakes on the market.  A well known example is a fake pair of "Albert Terry rig" merganser decoys.  They were made by a great master contemporary carver.  These are a great example of Gerard's modus operandi.  Bob had the pair made.  Then he started to shop them around.  I first heard of them when he then tried to get Stephen O'Brien to broker them for him at an outlandish price. Stephen called me to ask me about them if I had ever seen the pair.  I told him I had never seen them and as far as I knew, Bob only had a hen bird and the head was a replacement.  I also told him to check them out stem to stern.  He also knew Gerard's reputation as a crooked dealer as he had dealt with him in the past.  When Stephen got the pair he called me and said theses decoys aren't right.  He said when he opened the box they came in he could smell the fresh cedar.  He sent the pair to Gigi Hopkins who declared them complete fakes.  Stephen dumped them back in Gerard's lap.  Gerard then tried to sell the pair at decoy shows.  That is where I got to actually hold them and I knew who who had made them immediately.  There were no takers.  Bob just waited a few years and then offered them to none other than the great experts at G&ampS.  Yes, the number one American decoy auction house Guyette & Schmidt, and they accepted them.  They even featured the discredited pair of fakes on page 5 in the full page Guyette &Schmidt ad in Decoy Magazine July/August 2004 for their upcoming auction in November.  G&H lists the pair as "Important pair of mergansers, circa 1870's by Albert Terry."  Then many collectors began to let the "experts" at G&S know they were not really all that important.  What they really were was a pair of Gerard's contemporary fake Albert Terry's, not actual Albert Terry's.  They were then pulled from the auction and returned to Gerard, but if G&S not been contacted and told that they were fakes, G&S would have sold the bogus birds at auction, or at least tried to.  I am assuming they would not have been pulled.  Ironically, this pair sold in a later auction listed correctly as to what they really are.


There is another well known fake shorebird decoy with Bob's figurative fingerprints all over it.  The bird was sold at auction a few years back, a turned head plover, years after it first appeared and had been declared a fake by many collectors, including Ronnie McGrath.  Gerard was responsible for also putting out many other fakes.  These decoys are now in many private collections.  Nothing was below Bob.  He once consigned a merganser drake to a G&S auction.  They listed it as a rare Wildfowler decoy.  Why anyone would think it came out of any Wildfowler Factory would be anybody's guess.  There was nothing Wildfowler Factory about it.  Right after the drake sold at auction, Gerard went up to the Wildfowler collector who had just bought the drake bird and told him, I just so happen to have the hen rigmate to the drake you just bought.  The collector bought the hen.  When the collector showed me the birds and told me the story about Bob having the rigmate to this very rare pair of Wildfowlers, I asked him what would make you think these birds are Wildfowlers? And Gerard just happened to have the rigmate to the "rare" drake?  And the pair were of a type never seen from  any Wildfowler Company before? Do you really think those two decoys are really Wildfowlers?  He thought for a moment and said, "I guess he screwed me."  I said, "Yes, I guess he did."


There is another story that circulated about another Gerard scam he pulled off.  It was said that Gerard first had 3 shorebird decoys discreetly produced by an unscrupulous master contemporary carver.  One of these birds he had consigned to auction and then he bought it for $10,000.  Gerard has invested in the cost of the production of three shorebird decoys and at the time of the auction he paid 10% to the auction house when he bought it.  He then would have gotten back 90% of the money from the auction.  Then Gerard said he "luckily" had found two more decoys just like the one that had sold at auction for $10.000, which established the worth of the bird.  Now Gerard has a trio of shorebird decoys that he can say are worth a combined price of  $30,000 in total.  He exhibited this trio at the annual show in Easton, Maryland and other venues  for years.  Ronnie McGrath pointed the trio out to me at his display in the artifacts area.  I told him that I had seen them. and we speculated on what contemporary carver had made them.


If Gerard invited you to his home to show you his "collection" it was because he thought he could get something from you.  Bob's "collection" was salted with bad birds mixed in among the good ones.  This was for the suckers.  He was predatory and specialized in the new collector, before they wised up, if they ever did, or were wised up that he was a dishonest dealer by members of the LIDCA or other collectors.  Some of the birds he would show you were as right as rain.  Others were reheads, rebills, major repairs, repaints, and flat out fakes.  And he put unrealistic prices on many of them, including his fake Van Brunt buffleheads, which he first offered at $350.00 a pair, but over time as the word got out that they were fakes, the price began to drop drastically year by year.  He was always willing to let you buy the bad birds from his collection, all the time pontificating on what great birds they were.  Most of the experienced dealers stayed clear of his offerings, but Bob and his wife Wilma could be sickeningly charming if they thought you were ripe for the picking.  If you were a less well-healed collector, Bob would have nothing but disdain for you.  Gerard was haughty, arrogant, egotistical and stupid, but he thought he was a genius and he acted as if everyone else was stupid.


Bob had wormed his way in to the Museums at Stony Brook where he became their expert, the go-to guy for decoy acquisitions.  This is a classic fox in the hen house situation.  In 1979, the Museums at Stony Brook published their paperback catalog of their collection titled Gunner's Paradise.  On page 4, we find, "A special thanks to the very knowledgeable members the Long Island Decoy Collectors Association, members George Combs, Sr. and Jr., Bob Gerard, Fred Kaseman, Ken Rohl and Bud Ward."  The fact is, these early collectors were not knowledgeable as to who were the makers of Long Island's decoys.  They really didn't know a thing about most of the true makers that they collected, traded or sold, and more than one of these guys was involved in the fabrication of decoy maker's names for decoys that would otherwise be unknowns, or said to have been made by other undocumented decoy carvers they didn't want to be the makers.  Obediah Verity, Will Southard and Eugene "Chief "Cuffee are misattributions; fabrications perpetrated by The Combs, father and son, Bud Ward and Robert Gerard.


In the Stony Brook catalog, there are two carvings from the collection that are without a doubt made by William Henry Bennett, known as "Uncle Henry" from Springs, East Hampton.  On page 84, number 114, we find "White-winged Scoter,1900s, Maker Unknown, Sag Harbor, Long Island."  The second bird is found on page132, number 228, "Lesser Yellowlegs, Maker Unknown, Long Island, one of a pair."  This bird is one is one of the many pairs of bookends made by Uncle Henry Bennett that have been sold as Cuffee's over the last 30 + years.  These are the type of carvings that would begin to be called Cuffee's starting in the early 1980s.  Gerard was among the Long Island Decoy Collectors Association's advisory group, but when Gunner's Paradise was printed Bob Gerard had not yet perpetrated the "Chief Cuffee" fabrication for the carvings really made by Uncle Henry Bennett. They are all listed as by an unknown carvers in 1979.



                                             The Preface Opportunity for Deception


The folk art shorebirds and the floating stool, both decorative and hunting, that were made by William "Uncle Henry" Bennett were once found all over long Island's twin forks, especially on the South Fork.  They were found in antique shops,"junk shops" and yard sales, and also sold by their maker, Uncle Henry Bennett, before his death in 1954, and they also sold for very moderate prices.  Collectors of real hunting decoys like Donal O'Brien, Bud Ward, Ronnie McGrath, and Dr. James McCleery, had nothing but contempt for the so-called "shorebird decoys" made by Bennett.  Bob Gerard had been collecting the Bennett carvings.  They were cheap and fairly plentiful, and Gerard would soon be offered an opportunity to cash in on them by turning unknowns into a known decoy maker.  Gerard's opportunity came around 1980 when Dr. Gaynell Stone was putting together the book she would edit titled, The Shinnecock Indians: A Culture History.  Some of the chapters were written by separate writers.  One of those writers was Bob Gerard.  Dr.Stone was put in touch with Bob Gerard, a self-proclaimed decoy expert and president of the Long Island Decoy Collector's Association at the time.  Gerard was ask to write a chapter on the decoy carvers from the Shinnecock Reservation, Southampton, Long Island.  The only truly documented decoy carver from the reservation was Charles Sumner Bunn.  Gerard wrote a chapter titled, "Shinnecock Indian Duck Decoys", and he would document Bunn as a decoy carver.  However, he would use this chapter to establish the Chief Cuffee fabrication, this to give a name to the Bennett decoys he owned.  Gerard's first paragraph was used to establish Cuffee as the maker of the Bennett folk art.  Bob Gerard writes,


"Waterfowl decoys, a unique form of American folk art, were not associated with the Shinnecock Indians until 1980, when a long bill curlew decoy was consigned to a famous Massachusetts auction house bearing an age stained label inscribed, 'Bought at Riverhead Auction 1940 by Chief Cuffee Southampton L.I.'"


This chapter would later be reprinted in Decoy Magazine May-June 1982 and this would be where most decoy collectors first learned why these carvings were being called "Chief Cuffee" decoys.  Gerard now began to push the Museums at Stony Brook to acquire "Chief Cuffee" decoys.  In 1985, the museum acquired a pair of old squaws by "Chief Cuffee".  I have no way of knowing, but I would not be surprised if it was Bob who consigner of the pair.  They were sold by Oliver's auction house for $2,100.00.  The museum also bought a folk art decorative heron by Bennett, but sold and purchased as a "Chief Cuffee" heron.


In 2007, Dr. Stone did a small reprint of her book.  After she reviewed our research for Bennett, she was none too happy to see that Gerard had lied to her about Cuffee being a decoy maker.  She was also very upset that he had used her book to establish Cuffee as a maker of carvings he had nothing to do with.  Dr.Stone asked me to write an Errata for the chapter Gerard had written for the reprint.  This Errata corrects the Chief Cuffee fabrication and establishes William Bennett as the real maker, not Cuffee.


Once David Bennett had shown me conclusive evidence that William Uncle Henry Bennett was the real maker of the folk art pieces Gerard had said were made by Eugene Chief Cuffee, I thought I needed to discover why Gerard had said they were made by Cuffee in the first place.  The problem I now faced was that I had no use for Gerard after he flooded the market with his Wildfowler fake Van Brunt's and fake Quogue Wildfowlers, our relationship went even further south.  So I reached out to Stony Brook Museum's curator, Joshua Ruff, to ask him if he could ask Bob Gerard what "famous auction house in the State of  Massachusetts" had sold this curlew in 1980?  Of course there was only one famous auction house that specialized in decoys in Massachusetts, the Richard A. Bourne Company Inc., but why didn't he name the famous auction house this supposed important decoy was sold by?  Why didn't Gerard specify the auction lot number for the curlew or the date the auction took place?  Josh said he would contact Gerard for me and ask him the name of the auction house that sold the curlew.  In the meantime, being that I did not have a 1980 Bourne catalog, I contacted my friend and pioneer decoy collector, Joe French, to ask him to check his 1980 Bourne catalog for the curlew with the  description Gerard wrote of.  I also ask Joe Engers of Decoy Magazine to check his 1980 Bourne catalog.  The reply from both was that their was no description found in the 1980 Bourne catalog that matched Gerard's description for the  "Cuffee" curlew.  So now I knew the curlew was not in the Bourne 1980 catalog.  At that point we checked every Bourne catalog for the description Gerard cited and there was no such description in any of them.


Gerard had been away on vacation in Austria, so when Joshua finally got back to me he said, "Bob said the curlew was in the 1980 Bourne catalog."  I said no it wasn't in the Bourne 1980 catalog  Joshua said what do you mean.  I said it's not in the 1980 Bourne catalog. Then Joshua said well maybe he was mistaken and it is in another catalog.  I said Joshua the reason we have called these carvings Cuffee's is predicated on Bob Gerard saying they were first found in a 1980 catalog.  Then I told Josh that we had checked every Bourne catalog and the description is not found in any of their auction catalogs, or in any known auction house's catalogs in America, and that without a doubt, Gerard had fabricated the Cuffee attribution.  Bob Gerard stuck to his disproven Cuffee story for the rest of his life.  He never could produce the catalog he claimed existed, because it doesn't exists.


Lyle Smith is from the Shinnecock Reservation who had only recently begun to collect William Henry Bennett carvings being sold as Cuffee's.  All of a sudden Lyle claimed to be a Cuffee expert. At the January 2006 LIDCA meeting, he was supposed to give a talk to prove that Cuffee was the real maker of the Bennett carvings.  In Lyle's "talk" he presented no evidence for Cuffee as a decoy maker.  Actually all he did was rant and rave about how horrible David Bennett, David Martine and myself are.  When Lyle was asked for proof that Cuffee made the decoys, Lyle hade no proof for Cuffee.  The only thing he had was Bob Gerard's fabricated story.  He did speak about 91 year old Muriel Cuffee who Lyle said had said "Cuffee had made decoys", but with no proof for Cuffee as the maker.   When LIDCA member Frank Murphy ask Lyle, "If we were to show Mrs. Muriel Cuffee a shorebird decoy, could she identify it as a Cuffee?"  Lyle said No!



Joe Jannsen  presented a PowerPoint  on William Henry Bennett one month after Lyle's so-called presentation.  Joe's presentation proved the carvings were made by William Henry Bennett and not Eugene Cuffee, yet Joe was challenged by Wilma Gerard saying last month Lyle Smith said Cuffee made them.  Joe said what evidence did Lyle produce to show Cuffee made them? She had nothing to say; she shut up.  Lyle Smith just sat there and he also had nothing to say because he hadn't presented any evidence for Cuffee.  All he had done in his presentation was whine about how awful we researchers were and that people on the reservation were proud of his defense of Cuffee.


Bob Gerard interjected that the proof was that a curlew had sold at the 1980 Bourne Auction listed as made by Chief Cuffee.  I kid you not, he still claimed it was in the 1980 Bourne catalog, that anyone could look at and see it  wasn't in that catalog  Joe said Bob it's not in the 1980 Bourne auction catalog.  Gerard just sat down, bowed his head and said nothing.  Gerard at that point knew the jig was up.  His deception had been exposed.  He had no refuge from his lie.  Gerard was defeated in his false claim for Cuffee.


Gerard started dumping his "Cuffee''s" at bargain prices.  His Cuffee fabrication had been easily exposed and he was getting out of the Cuffee business.  But Bob jumped the gun.  Bob didn't count on what would happen next.  Nether did I.  The auction houses were caught off guard.  Dealers and collectors were God-smacked.  Some started calling them Cuffee/Bennetts.  But Bob Gerard and his Cuffee's had a new and very unexpected champion, none other than Ronnie McGrath.  Out of the blue, Ronnie who had despised both Bob Gerard and his "Cuffee's" became their savior.  Ronnie in true Don Quixote fashion would now gallop at full speed at the William Henry Bennett Windmill.  Ronnie's new scenario is the same scenario he used for Charles Bunn in that Ronnie has the documented carver Bunn copying the fabricated Bill Bowman, and now the documented William Henry Bennett copying the work of the fabricated Eugene Cuffee. All of this is based on absolutely no research.


Some auction houses liked this compromise, but many just stuck with Gerard's proven fabrication for Cuffee.  The facts are William Henery Bennett made all the carvings formerly attributed to either an unknown carver or "Cuffee".  The shorebirds are all decoratives and not working stool.  There is no evidence for Cuffee as a maker of any decoys that we know of, and if he did make decoys, they would most likely resemble the work of his first cousin, Charles Sumner Bunn.