Posted 8 years ago
cottonball
(1 item)
Here's a really neat duck decoy that my father gave to me. He found it at a store in rural Mississippi and didn't tell me anything else about it. I haven't seen another one like it. I just love the paint that still exists on it and it looks Native American to me - at least, I know it's primitive. I have no clue how old it is, but it's head came off and someone adhered it back onto the body. It must have really been used at some point. Maybe the retriever broke the head off in hunting? It's not marked on the bottom and it's painted black. It's not really all that heavy, but it's definitely made of wood. I'm not a huge collector of duck decoys, but I love this unique piece. If anyone knows anything else about it, please share! I love history and would love to know more about this gift. Thanks for letting me share! Check out the colors on it! It's a beauty!
Looks like when the head came off, it was mistakenly replaced with a woodpecker's head !
Sorry, but this isn't an antique decoy. It's a "decorative" decoy made in, most likely, Indonesia...and made to have an antique look. The whole thing was painted, and then all the rough edges of the carved areas have been sanded off to give a worn look.
A real antique decoy would be painted to resemble a real duck, with realistic feather patterns, or at least colors...which this obviously isn't. Nor is the form, with that strange head, anything remotely like any known duck. The whole purpose of a decoy was to attract wild ducks. This thing would more likely scare them away.
A real decoy would also have weights on the bottom, or at least holes where they had once been attached, so it would float upright. It wouldn't be painted black like this, and it would be shaped so that it would have a realistic look when floating.
The black bottom is similar to the Indonesian copies of Northwest Coast masks, where the backs are painted black to conceal the fact that they are carved from tropical woods. That is one of the key ways to spot Indonesian fakes when it comes to masks and First Nation-style carvings. And I do know there were fake Indonesian decoys being produced in the 1970s. But I wouldn't call this one a fake, necessarily, since it doesn't really resemble any real duck or decoy.
(Native American decoys were made of woven reeds, or the skins of real birds...they weren't carved from wood. )