Decoy: Snow Goose

Dateca. 1960

Artist/Maker Herman Glick (1895-1983)

Artist/Maker Nicolas Englhart (1888 - 1985)

MediumPaint, wood, tinplate, and glass eyes

DimensionsOverall (Decoy mounted on maker's stand): 12 3/4 x 27 1/2 x 7 1/2in. (32.4 x 69.9 x 19.1cm); Other (Decoy only)): 7 3/4 x 27 1/2 x 4 3/4in. (19.7 x 69.9 x 12.1cm); Other (Maker's stand only): 5 1/4 x 7 1/2in. (13.3 x 19.1cm)

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number1974.702.1

DescriptionA stick-up, full-bodied decoy of a snow goose iin feeding position, the bird shown with drooping tail and head, the long neck sinuously curved. The body is painted white, the bill yellow. The function (if any) of the flaps of tinplate on the sides of the bird is unclear; the purpose may have been strickly visual.
Label TextAt age ten or twelve, Herman Glick began making flat (silhouette) decoys for his own use, but as a boy, he preferred hunting to carving. In later years, inspired by several other area decoy makers, he began carving more intensively and he expanded his repertoire to include full-bodied fowl like this Snow Goose.
One of of Glick's mentors was his good friend, Nicolas ("Nick") Englhart, a cabinetmaker and ferry operator of German descent who lived in nearby Manitou, Illinois. Englhart gave Glick some snow goose decoys he had made during the 1920s, as well as some separate, detached heads. (Englhart purposely created detachable heads so that he could change his decoys' attitudes at will; in contrast to "feeder" heads like this one, he made others in an upright, alert position.)
The Folk Art Museum's decoy consists of an Englhart-made head permanently attached to a Glick-made body. Glick basically followed the form of Englhart's body design but incorporated a major structural change. Englhart lightened the weight of his birds by hollowing their sides and covering the cavities with tin flaps. Glick made his birds solid-bodied but added the tin flaps, anyway --- whether out of respect for Englhart's design or simply because he liked the look is unclear.

InscribedIncised in block lettering on the underbody "H. Glick."
ProvenanceSold by the maker in 1971 to Phyllis Ellison, Southfield, Mich.; sold at auction at Robert Skinner's, Bolton, Mass., in April 1973; bought at the preceding auction by AARFAM's vendor, David Pottinger of Bloomfield Hills, Mich.