By Angeljean Chiaramida
Staff writer
August 28, 2009 12:15 am 1When the auction was over, the 100 bidders on hand had paid nearly $34,000 for Boyd's little wooden masterpieces. Not bad for birds that Boyd once sold for as little as 2 cents to 75 cents when he first carved them in the early 20th century. In the crowd watching bids for her father's work rise higher and higher was Elvira Boyd Thompson. "I just can't believe this," Boyd's daughter said in an article printed at the time in the New Hampshire Sunday Herald. "Papa never even signed any of his birds. He never thought they were that important. He used to practically give them away. If he were here and saw all these people paying these prices, I guess he'd just laugh." If Boyd may have laughed back then, he might be speechless today. One of his carved merganser diving duck decoys would typically fetch about $30,000 on the current collectors market, said Boyd biographer Jim Cullen. A collector and carved bird consultant who owns several of Boyd's birds, Cullen recently published an illustrated book on the Seabrook carver's life and work. Filled with fine art photographs by Andrew David, Cullen said his book, "Finely Carved & Nicely Painted: The Life, Art and Decoys of George H. Boyd," was a labor of love that he felt compelled to write. "He is a nationally known decoy maker, yet little was known about George Henry Boyd himself," Cullen of Rye, N.H., said. "(In 1965,) William Mackey (Jr.), the foremost collector and expert on decoys, praised (Boyd's) work, but said he was a relative unknown." In fact, the title of Cullen's 96-page book comes from Mackey. In Mackey's book, "American Bird Decoys," a caption accompanying a photo of two Boyd birds reads: "Shorebirds by a prolific, but unknown maker. They are finely carved and nicely painted.'" Cullen said he has long been drawn to decoys as an utilitarian art form. "I'm attracted to decoys, for they have to succeed on two fronts: the workmanship and artistry, and also the engineering," Cullen said. "(Decoys) are used by hunters to attract birds. They have to float properly, and they have to look like a duck to attract another duck." Boyd's decoys, he said, succeeded on all levels. From humble beginnings Boyd's anonymity is most likely due to the unpretentious way he led his life and practiced his craft, Cullen said. The Seabrook that Boyd was born into in 1873 was a "hard-working, family-oriented community," he said. Farming, fishing, boat building and shoe-making were the major industries of the time, he said, and most residents did more than one to sustain themselves and their families. Although Boyd earned his primary income at one of Seabrook's shoe manufacturers, he was always drawn to wildlife as a boy, having grown up near the salt marsh, Cullen said. Like other families in town, he said, hunting was a way of life for him, not for sport, but as a source of food and revenue. "Everyone carved their own decoys back then," Evelyn Fowler of Seabrook said at a book-signing for Cullen's book this summer at Seabrook Public Library. "It's just something everyone did; no one thought much about it." While Boyd may have originally carved decoys to allow him to more successfully hunt waterfowl to feed his family, Cullen said his talent quickly became evident. The same skillful hands he applied to shoe-making were used on his carvings. "... These shoe-making skills and abilities were easily transferable to the construction of decoys," Cullen writes in his book. "Standardization and assembly-line orientation were especially important to Boyd's success when constructing a rig of six or 12 shorebird, duck or goose decoys." By 1900, when Boyd wasn't making shoes or hunting himself, Cullen writes, he was carving wooden shorebird decoys for individual customers and stores like Macy's, Abercrombie & Fitch and Iver Johnson, a Boston firearms maker and retailer with an elite clientele. "George Boyd was very talented; you can see it in his birds," said Seabrook businessman Henry Boyd, a decoy carver himself, but not a direct descendent of George Boyd. "He didn't copy anyone else's style. George Boyd had his own unique style. His birds have very beautiful lines, distinct to him. "There is a great sense of pride in Seabrook about Boyd and his talent, but also, by all accounts, he was a wonderful person and everyone loved him." Boyd's increasing value While Boyd's talent extended to larger items in demand at the time, such as tools, sculling oars and sneak floats (a 16-foot duck hunting boat), it was his birds, including a line of miniature shorebirds, that brought him local, and eventually national, fame, both during and after his death. At an art auction earlier this month by Northeast Auctions of Portsmouth, N.H., one of Boyd's birds, an 11-inch painted yellowlegs carved in 1910, sold for $3,510. "George Henry Boyd's carvings are highly sought after and the (decoy collectible) market has been rising for years," said Paul Royka, a nationally known fine art and antiques expert based in central Massachusetts. "His works have gone upwards of $80,000, but many other examples are in the low thousands." Henry Boyd said George might be a little put out at the high prices his birds are drawing today. "There's a story told about him in town," Henry Boyd said. "They say George got very upset with his daughter because she wanted him to double the price he charged for his birds, from 50 cents to $1. He didn't want to do that because he wanted people to be able to buy them, and he thought a dollar would be too much for them to pay." According to Cullen's research, the state of New Hampshire invited George Boyd to exhibit his carvings at the 1939 New Hampshire Pavilion of the New York World's Fair. He declined. A humble man, Cullen said Boyd avoided attention, instead working out of a shoemaker's "10-footer" shed beside his Collins Street home in Seabrook. He would whittle away the hours, capturing the likenesses of what Cullen suspects were as many as 1,000 of the delicate salt marsh creatures that captivated him as a boy. "He could probably carve a (bird's) head in about 10 minutes," Cullen said. "His ability to carve quickly must come from his work in the shoe factories, where you had to work fast. He had to have delicate hands, but if you look at his hands, they were huge. Henry Boyd has a couple of those decoys in his collection. They were a gift from his grandson, Gerald Thompson. "I have a black duck and a little Canada goose that's unfinished," Henry Boyd said. "It doesn't matter what they're worth. I'd never sell them, never part with them." A man and hiS BIRDS "Finely Carved & Nicely Painted: The Life, Art and Decoys of George H. Boyd, Seabrook, New Hampshire, 1873-1941," by James Cullen, photography by Andrew Davis, is a limited-edition book available through the author for $65. Call 603-964-9918 or write Cullen at P.O. Box 888, Rye, N.H. 03870. A copy is also available at the Seabrook Public Library.
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