Saturday, June 14, 2014
antique wood/GESSO painted BIRD on base- $14
A friend of mine, also enjoying his Golden Years, bought this beautifully paint-decorated bird at an estate auction in the Northeast approximately forty years ago. I talked him out of it about a month ago. If that’s not provenance, I don’t know what is!
I love it, but when someone asks where it’s from or what it is, I simply tell them it is the Drama Queen of shorebird decoys.
It could be a Black-throated Rainbow Clam-gargler, a blunt-beaked relative of the Plover, now extinct. Two men by the name of Koch purchased the last two of the species extant four years ago; killed them, sautéed them in moo-cow butter, and ate them between two slices of white bread, thickly drizzled with ketchup - washed down with two tumblers of wine, poured over ice from a $600 bottle of French wine.