Virginia Pilot

Carolina Duck Decoy Sells for $25,850
By Jon Glass

When Alvirah Wright put knife to wood about 90 years ago to carve out his bulky hunting man's decoys, he probably never guessed that he was creating an art form that one day would be worth thousands of dollars.

Back in the early 1900s, when the Camden County native operated a log mill at Martin's Point in Dare County, his sturdy duck decoys sold for the whopping price of 25 cents, perhaps 75 cents tops.

But last weekend, one of Wright's canvasback hens fetched $25,850 on a Maine auction block, establishing a record bid for a North Carolina decoy.

That sale, plus tile high prices brought by a covey of other Tar Heel decoys from the 19th and early 20th centuries, has earned these traditional working decoys a new- found respectability on the national decoy collectors market.

"This has created a whole new dimension for North Carolina decoys and will draw a tremendous amount of attention to them," said Gary Guyette, co-owner of the James D. Julia-Gary Guyette auction house in Fairfield, Maine. "It definitely sets a new price structure for most North Carolina decoys because they went at such high levels, and this will be publicized."

Guyette attributed the strong bidding prices at the annual fall decoy auction to extensive prior publicity and an intense interest in the particular decoys being offered -a collection of 80 birds amassed by Goldsboro collector James S. "Jim" Lewis Jr. over a 30-year period before his death in 1985.

The auction house's preauction catalog described the Wright canvasback as "exceedingly rare" and Lewis' collection as the "finest and most diversified group of North Carolina decoys ever to come to auction." Only a few of Wright's canvasbacks are known to exist out of the 300 or so decoys he made in his lifetime.

An estimated 300 people from the East Coast attended the auction, but it attracted nationwide interest. Guyette said six people bid for the Wright canvasback by telephone from Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Detroit, Texas, North Carolina and Virginia.

Donn Mitchell, a Nags Head carver and a member of the North Carolina Decoy Collectors and Carvers Association, said the auction broke new ground for Tar Heel decoys.

"It's the first time a major North Carolina collection has been accepted by a national auction house," Mitchell said.

The sale "blew the sky off," Mitchell added. "It's going to make a difference here to decoy carvers and dealers on how we price decoys."

However, he predicted that the biggest price increases will affect only decoys on the upper end of the market, those carved by now-deceased craftsmen such as Wright.

He said other carvers in that group would include Ned Burgess of Waterlily, the brothers Lee and Lem Dudley of Knotts Island, John Williams of Knotts Island, Gary Bragg of Ocracoke, Bob Morse of Churches Island, Mitchell Fulcher of Stacey, Jim Best of Kitty Hawk and Frank Gaskill of Portsmouth Island.

Those carvers all had decoys in the auction, and most of their birds brought double the estimate during bidding Saturday and Sunday, Guyette said. A pair of Fulcher canvasback pintails sold for $9,075 last weekend.

Prior to the record bid for Wright's canvasback, a Lee Dudley canvasback that brought $14,000 was tops for a North Carolina decoy.

In 1978 the going price for a Wright ruddy duck, which sold for $20,900 over the weekend, was only $100, Mitchell said. Three years ago, a canvasback hen identical to Wright's $25,850 bird drew only $8,000.

Decoys made by Tar Heel carvers have long been shunned by many collectors, who consider them crude, since they lack the decorative detail that most collectors seek.

However, Jim Lewis' son, James Lewis III of Waynesville, said the decoys were made to be functional, to attract ducks and other waterfowl to hunting blinds.

"They were not made to sit on the mantel and be something pretty," Lewis said. "Details were left out, but it took a very great skill to make them. Anybody who collects and loves them very definitely considers them an art form of their own."

Guyette said Lewis' North Carolina decoys comprised only 10 percent of the weekend auction, but they were "consistently high priced" when compared to the other decoys offered.

"The North Carolina decoys were the strongest group in the auction," he said. "This is the first time we've ever had a lot of North Carolina decoys and they were good ones. The good ones are hard to come by."