Verity Family Tern

Obediah Verity (1813-1901) Seaford, Long Island, NY, c. 1880 13 in. long

The late 19th century brought about a change in millinery fashion. A hat decorated with feathers and wings was considered the height of couture. Though popular for fashion, terns were evidently no culinary delight. Market hunters received only ten dollars per one hundred birds and, thus, terns were not widely hunted, making any tern decoy rare.

Verity’s representation of this elegant, racy species is perhaps the cleanest design in the decoy field and the carvings from this small rig are the finest tern decoys known. Henry Fleckenstein depicts two worn rigmates on a color plate in his "Shore Bird Decoys" book, next to which he notes that “only one rig of twelve are known to have been made by Obediah.”

The rig was passed down through the extended Verity family of Seaford to Nelson Verity (1854-1947). Nelson is known to have guided Yankee baseball greats, Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, in South Oyster Bay.

The Muller tern is one of the very top terns. Other rigmates have resided in premier collections and in July of 1999, a rigmate set an auction record for any Obediah Verity decoy at the time. In early Verity paint typical of the rig with gunning wear, a restored left wing tip, and touch-up to top of right wing.

Provenance: Bud Ward Collection Dr. Peter J. Muller Jr. Collection, acquired from the above, circa 1980

Literature: Henry A. Fleckenstein Jr., Southern Decoys of Virginia and The Carolinas, Exton, PA, 1983, p. 33, exact decoy illustrated. Joe Engers, “Dr. Peter J. Muller: Bringing a good eye and an artistic approach to decoy collecting,” Decoy Magazine, January/February 2008, p. 12, exact decoy illustrated. Robert Shaw, Call to the Sky: The Decoy Collection of James M. McCleery, M.D., Houston, TX, 1992, p. 81, closely related decoy illustrated. Henry H. Stansbury, Ira D. Hudson and Family, Lewes, DE, 2002, p. 76, similar decoy illustrated.

Provenance

Bud Ward Collection Dr. Peter J. Muller Jr. Collection, acquired from the above, circa 1980