Inside the Decoy Shop: The Period Room at the Upper Bay Museum

Standing inside the Decoy Shop at the Upper Bay Museum in North East, Maryland, in late January, I could not decide where to start our Museum Studies SWAT team Decoy Shop project.

Where would you begin?

Should we work from top to bottom, or should we tackle one corner at a time? At the suggestion of one of my colleagues, we carefully plucked a wooden duck decoy from a worktable and started with artifacts displayed on that surface. Our eight day project to inventory, clean, photograph, and catalogue the period room--or a museum exhibit room created to evoke a specific time and place--at the Upper Bay Museum had begun. (Other SWAT team members catalogued the other collections displayed throughout the Museum.)

What can we learn from the Upper Bay Museum Decoy Shop period room?

University of Delaware Museum Studies Director Kasey Grier examines
decoys at the Upper Bay Museum prior to the begin in of the SWAT project

The Decoy Shop at the Upper Bay Museum is an installation curated by Upper Chesapeake Bay residents who make decoys, or imitations of ducks or other animals hunters have used to lure their prey at least since 400 BC, and who hunt and fish in the region known as the Susquehanna Flats in the Upper Chesapeake Bay.

The Decoy Shop at the Upper Bay Museum in North East, MD

Unlike many period rooms, though, the Shop interior was not copied directly from archival documentation or taken in its entirety from an original shop. Rather, the shop is a conglomeration of decoy-making related objects from several makers. Museum curators likely drew inspiration from a variety of sources, including twentieth-century interior photographs of other decoy shops in the region as well as the personal experiences Museum curators and local practitioners have had with decoy carving.

Steve and Lem Ward inside a decoy carving shop around 1918
(From Joe Engers, ed., The Great Book of Wildfowl Decoys, 2000)

Upper Bay Museum curators arranged the artifacts to evoke the interior of a working mid twentieth-century decoy maker’s shop on the Upper Chesapeake at the tale end the height of market duck hunting but during the continuation of sport duck hunting. This interpretive choice offers a different type of historical authenticity than do other methods of creating period rooms (no single method of which I find "right" or "wrong"--all are all fascinating and informative).

Tyler catalogues one of over 25 shotguns made and used
between 1850 and 1950

The Decoy Shop is unique in that it is one of only a handful of workshop period rooms in American museums. (In contrast, countless domestic period rooms championed in the early twentieth century by institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York--fill museums throughout the country today.) Others workshop period rooms include a Decoy Shop exhibit at the Havre de Grace Decoy Museum, the Dominy Shops (furniture and clockmaking) at the Winterthur Museum, and the Wright Cycle Shop at Greenfield Village. European examples include a recreation of a sixteenth-century jeweler's workshop, based on a 1576 engraving, on display in the Museum of London's show about the Cheapside Hoard.

The Museum of London Jeweler's Period, as reported by the Associated Press

The Upper Bay Museum and its collections embody rich interpretative value relating to the interconnectedness of the region’s cultural and environmental history. To that end, the Museum’s Decoy Shop period room plays a unique didactic role that could not be achieved by a traditional gallery display featuring rows of workbenches and tools. Instead, by furnishing the Decoy Shop with a variety of objects associated with the craft and related industries, the period room display provides visitors with an opportunity to explore the relationships between decoy-making tools, decoy parts, the spaces and places where decoys were made, and the people who made them, as determined by Upper Chesapeake individuals with ties to the profession and hobby of decoy carving and duck hunting.

Cataloguing decoys at the Upper Bay Museum

Visitors view the Shop interior from one vantage point behind a door or from behind the Shop’s two windows. There is plenty to see. The shop is filled with hundreds of objects associated with decoy carving as well as with hunting, fishing, and boating in the upper Chesapeake more generally. The objects are displayed on shelves, on the walls, and on the floor. Objects range from workbenches to piles of nails. Primary object groups include: large pieces of work furniture; containers filled with supplies and tools; hand tools such as files and spoke shaves; completed decoys as well as decoys in various states of completion; a few items associated with the H. L. Harvey Company (active from about 1880 to the mid twentieth century); and miscellaneous items associated with fishing and hunting such as a life preservers and boat parts. In addition, the Shop "complex" also includes two workbenches installed just outside the shop.

Museum Studies Staff Assistant Tracy Jentzsch vacuuming an early twentieth-century life vest at the Upper Bay Museum
(Learn how your museum can borrow the vac and other supplies!)

In the process or leading the group that documented and catalogued the shop contents, it occurred to me that, even though we carefully removed and replaced each artifact, the Shop looked slightly different--a bit more tidy and spruced-up--when we were through with our work (before photo at left; after photo at right). We did, after all, dust every object and display surface; vacuum using a HEPA vac; sweep; wash the windows; secure objects using cotton twill tape where there had been duct tape...and more (all of which will help ensure the longer-term preservation of the objects). Even these slight, non-interpretative changes made the shop look different. What are the effects of more evasive interpretation changes on period rooms? How does one strike an appropriate balance of preservation and work-room-like authenticity?

 

In the case of the Decoy Shop at the Upper Bay Museum, authenticity derives from workshop dirt, the objects' provenance (or history of ownership and use), and the identities of those who put them there. The Shop contents were made and used by several Upper Bay decoy carvers, a layered history that highlights continuities and change over time as it relates to decoy carving in this region. Some upper Bay decoy carvers represented here include Standley Evans (1887-1979; active 1919-1933) (used the decoy horse inside the shop); Horace D. Graham (1893-1982; active 1955-1978) (used the auto-sander inside the shop and shaving bench outside the shop as well as the many miscellaneous workshop contents distributed throughout the shop), and Paul Gibson (1902-1985; active 1915-1985) (used the painting table and paint brushes on display).

Nicole Belolan cataloguing Paul Gibson's painting worktable inside the Decoy Shop

Despite the fact that hunting waterfowl in the Upper Chesapeake was limited to sport (rather than market hunting) after 1918, decoy carvers—such as those represented inside this Shop—continued to provide decoys for sportsmen into the mid-twentieth century. Some of the decoy carvers represented inside the Shop were hobbyists; others made decoys for a living. All of them used store-bought tools in combination with handmade tools made using a mix of reused and new materials, suggesting the fact that many decoy carvers engaged with (and continue to engage with) their craft as skilled do-it-yourself artisans or tinkerers. For example, the Horace Graham auto-sander was made with used wood and a washing machine motor:

His shaving bench features repurposed moldings:

Many of the supply containers were made from recycled mid-twentieth-century food containers, examples of which can be seen lining the Shop shelves in the photograph below. Anyone who has ventured inside a contemporary workshop has probably seen similar examples of reuse.

And of course, there are the decoys. The unfinished duck decoy parts, some of which are displayed inside this basket, were made by the following individuals, several of whom are still living: Mike Laird, J.E. Gonce, Bill Streaker, Jeff Muller, Vernon S. Bryant, Joey Jacobs[?], James Frey, and Bobby Simons:

Hardly a static exhibit meant to evoke one time period, the Decoy Shop at the Upper Bay Museum embodies the continued local interest in and practice of the craft of decoy making.

What could be more authentic than that?

To learn more about how your museum can apply to the UD Museum Studies SWAT project, visit our web site.

In preparing for my work at the Upper Bay Museum, I found that C. John Sullivan's Waterfowling on the Chesapeake, 1819-1936 (2003) provides readers with the best historical context for duck decoy use. Those with a theoretical bent might enjoy Marjolein Efting Dijkstra's The Animal Substitute: An Ethnological Perspective on the Origin of Image-Making and Art (2010).

Nicole Belolan is a Ph.D. Candiate in the History of American Civilization program at the University of Delaware. She is also a graduate assistant for Sustaining Places, an IMLS-funded initiative that is dedicated to providing hands-on, practical resources for small museums.

Vineland's Closet

While driving through the farm fields and small towns along Route 40 in Southern New Jersey last January, my pulse raced with excitement in anticipation of what we might find in the costume collection of the Vineland Historical and Antiquarian Society (VHAS) in Vineland, New Jersey. Charles K. Landis founded Vineland in the early 1860s as a utopian community, and residents established its historical and antiquarian society complete with a purpose-built structure soon thereafter.

Vineland Historical and Antiquarian Society entrance (Photo, UD Museum Studies)

Since the 1860s, VHAS has served as the community’s chief repository for its material and intellectual history including an extensive local glass collection, an unpublished utopian novel, personal items owned by Landis and another early VHAS booster, Frank D. Andrews, and more. Who wouldn’t be excited about working at such an institution for two weeks?

Upon my arrival at VHAS, I sat and listened eagerly to UD Museum Studies director Prof. Katherine Grier and VHAS’s curator Patricia Martinelli as they explained the “SWAT Inventory” project’s plan of attack. Some of my colleagues would be working on inventorying over 4,500 books, and others would be creating a curatorial workroom. Additional projects included inventorying the contents of the Andrews Room, assessing light levels and pest presence, and much more. I had the pleasure of coordinating the costume inventory and cataloguing project. And so while one half of my consciousness listened while Prof. Grier and Ms. Martinelli told us where to find pencils and brass safety pins and how to locate the restroom, the other half speculated about the nature of the treasures that might be waiting for us in the storage rooms.

The VHAS costume collection was not shrouded in total mystery; we had some idea as to what we would inventory and catalogue thanks to a fall scouting trip. At that time, Museum Studies Sustaining Places SWAT Inventory students, faculty, and staff assessed the costume collection casually. We spied eighteenth-century brocaded shoes and nineteenth-century silk bonnets, giving us good reasons to look forward to breathing new life into the collections there. But it wasn’t until the project commenced in earnest that we developed a more comprehensive overview of the contents of Vineland’s “closet.” Within minutes of diving into the striped silks, printed paisley wools, and beaded bodices, we came upon mid nineteenth-century women’s dresses in near pristine condition, early twentieth-century Ku Klux Klan uniforms, a collection of civilian clothing worn by a Civil War veteran, and a treasure trove of nineteenth-century children’s clothing, to list just a few highlights.

We worked steadily and seriously, setting up vacuuming, photographic, and other “stations” to help the work progress efficiently.

A view of the textile SWAT operation at VHAS (Photo, UD Museum Studies)

But we also had some fun. What better excuse to indulge in some girlish giggles after alighting upon not one but two 1890s “bust improvers,” or "falsies," (objects with which I was unfamiliar until working at VHAS) with local provenance (history of ownership)? 

Nicole Belolan with an 1890s bust improver with local provenance at VHAS (Photo, Katherine C. Grier)

Historically, women wore far more pieces of under garments than they do today. In the nineteenth century, most women wore corsets--which were sometimes rigid and shaped a woman’s torso into the fashionable silhouette of the moment--underneath dress bodices or shirtwaists. Corsets, unlike the stays that preceded them, also served the purpose of delineating two separate breasts.

Corset, 1830s-1840s, decorated with silk embroidery, history of ownership with  

Kittie Gallup Andrews (1842-1880), wife of Frank D. Andrews (VHAS Collection)

Sometimes women donned corset covers over their corsets to help smooth the rigid corsets or to prevent outer fabrics from revealing too much skin. Some women with smaller busts also wore bust improvers like those found at VHAS outside their corsets and beneath their clothing to enhance natural bust lines and to conform to the late nineteenth-century fashion silhouette that often emphasized the bust (as seen in the fashion plate below).

"Godey's Fashions," Godey's Lady's Book, April 1890 (Accessible Archives)

Whose busts did these intimate objects improve? Women—in this case, two Vineland women—wore these undergarments to help fill out their busts. Both bust improvers were made from plain-woven white cotton fabric and were embellished with decorative white cotton trim. One bust improver marked as having been owned by Emma B. Andrews (probably the older sister of Frank D. Andrews) retains its horsehair stuffing. (Horsehair was also used to stuff everyday objects such furniture upholstery.)

Bust improver with horsehair stuffing, underside, 1890s, inscribed "Emma B. Andrews" (VHAS Collection)

The other bust improver was marked has having been used by Lavinia A. Norton (probably the mother of Frank D. Andrews) in 1891.

Bust improver, upper surface, inscribed "Lavinia A. Norton/Vineland/N.J./1891." on underside (VHAS Collection)

Bust improver, underside detail of bust improver pictured above (VHAS Collection)

The VHAS counts these personal items among the many fascinating costume treasures with local provenance in its collection. Extant objects such as these bust improvers suggest the intimate ways ordinary women engaged with the fashion of their times, personal habits that would be challenging to untangle without material culture evidence.

From bust improvers to mundane cotton day skirts to rare men’s paisley dressing gown, the contents of Vineland’s closet impressed us at every turn. We gave each item the careful attention it deserved, describing it thoroughly, taking its photograph, assessing its condition, and packing it away for when VHAS will call upon it again to help tell Vineland’s stories.

VHAS costume collection carefully packed away, awaiting to be moved to more permanent storage in the new curatorial work room (Photo, UD Museum Studies)

What might we learn about bodies and hygiene from a purple silk dress, stained with perspiration? How might we better comprehend some Americans’ late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century reasons for donning Ku Klux Klan uniforms? How might the carefully recorded family provenance and genealogies, spelled out on tags and index cards, inspire current Vineland residents to save special items from their own closets for subsequent generations to learn from? The questions we can bring to the VHAS costume collection are endless, and answers to those questions will change each time we ask them. If Vineland's closet had not been full, we would not have been able to pose any questions in the first place.

~~~

Just a few weeks ago, the Vineland City Council invited us back to thank us for our volunteer effort. When all was said and done, as a group, we contributed over 1,000 volunteer hours. By any measure, we donated a lot of energy and expertise to VHAS and the City's cultural heritage more generally. We earned the accolades we received for helping "sustain" Vineland's cultural heritage as a unique "place." But as a participant in the project, I benefitted too. I learned about Vineland's history and costume types (such as bust improvers) with which I was previously unfamiliar. I also I enjoyed the discussions I had with my colleagues about collecting philosophies and practices. And so I cannot thank VHAS staff and board members enough for welcoming us into their space and for allowing us to take a long, careful look through Vineland’s closet.

I look forward to taking that drive down Route 40 again soon!

Learn more about SWAT 2013 here!