The Waterbury Democrat., 1934-11-03
In New York
RY PAUL HARRIsON


 New York It's fine weather for ducks, and hence a good time to tell about MT Joel Barber, who collects decoys.
 You may not have realized it,
 but decoys-fine old scared and | bleached wooden models of can- bas- blacks, mallards, blue-bills and such-are art. They're Americana | just as hooked rugs and colonial | furniture are American = all part
 of our national scene and saga. Museums exhibiting MT Bar ber's decoys label them "Primi-
 tive Polychrome Sculpture" An- tique dealers are beginning to | cherish some of the best hand
 made specimens, and sell them for fancy prices. And now Barber
 has written whole book, replete with color plates, called Wild
 Fowl decoys' (Windward House). He isn't sure just what sportsmeE will think when they learn that they and their fathers and granG> pappies have been potting fea>E-
 cred game with the aid of pSi,:si- tive polychrome sculpture.
 Decoys Lure Him Far
 Barber is an architect, and help ed the late Raymond Hood design some of Manhattan's most notable buildings. Friends find 1t pretty 1 hard to reconcile Barber's soaring | modernism with his passion for
 studying early American bird lures | but that isn't the only incongruity l in his makeup. Another is that he doesn't shoot duck; not often. any
 way. But let him get word that a decoy cider duck whittled by Cap | tain Harris Young has turned up
 on Iron Bound Island, and Barber | will drop his work and be on his
 way to Nova Scotia.
 For almost three centuries
 back, his family were sportsfolk
 along the New England seaboard.
 From the time he could walk he
 hung around shipyards, and de- veloped an eye for the fair
 lines of good sailing craft. He | soon learned. too, that men who | built boats could carve the finest decoys, and that the wooden birds | turned out by one master were | never like those of another mak- CT. To his eye, if not to a lay | mans. the decoys were as differ
 ent as signatures.
 You or I might hack out decoys
 which would attract ducks; some
 kinds of duck, that aren't too
 perceptive. anyway. But that
 isn't the point. Unless we turned
 out masterpieces of craftsman ship. skilfully colored and all Barber has come upon collections of heirloom decoys, handed down for generations and each treas
 ured in its separate little cloth bag.
 Machine-made decoys are not art. either, even though some rather old items are extant from factory founded in Detroit in 1863. Very few stout whittlers from .Barnegat and Great South Bay. the Chesapeake and other gunHing paradises have drifted into the west or deep south. So the best decoy hunting grounds remain along eastern estuaries and marshes, from the Carolinas to Nova Scotia.
 Decoys While It Sleeps
 Barber's' collection numbers more than 200 notable specimens each with bit of folklore attached to 1t. There's one member of a wood en flock over which President Cleveland used to shoot. And fine wild swan, fashioned by Samuel T. Barnes of Hayre de Grace, Md, In Connecticut Barber found a grace
 full sleeping blue-bill, which has had it's head tucked under a wing for 60 years. And so on He prizes a model of wild pigeon, which species long has been ex- tinct.. And out in Nevada some- body dug up a decoy made of reeds and feathers-10OO-year evidence that the Indians were the first to deceive wild fowl. The most exciting duck hunting Barber knows about is done 10 and 12 miles off Nova Scotia. No chance to build blinds there, so the hunters row out and climb
 into uck-tubs-vertically floating tanks just big enough to hold a man. Each tub is ballasted with rocks until the top is precariously close to water level. Long strings of decoys are tied to it and a hunter gets in to wait, shivering and boboing on the heaving open sea, for some unwary cider duck to settle down. You'd never imag inc sport like that had anything to do with &rt.