“Gutip Sernigiliget Kaladlit (God Bless the Greenlanders,” 1932. Watercolor over traces of graphite, courtesy of Jake Milgram Wien.

Massachusetts Heron Brings $57,750 in Illinois

ST CHARLES, ILL. – When Guyette & Schmidt, Inc., conducted their annual spring decoy auction on April 26 and 27, they were in for a surprise. The auction which was held in conjunction with the Midwest Decoy Collector’s show at the Pheasant Run Resort, drew a crowd of over 500 enthusiastic buyers. When the results were tallied, the number was $2,124,000. That figure was Guyette & Schmidt, Inc’s, third highest gross in 17 years of business.

Top lot in the sale was a very rare heron confidence decoy from Massachusetts, which sold for $57,750. The auction contained many Illinois River decoys, most sold within or over estimate. The sale featured a collection of 28 full-sized decorative carvings by Elmer Crowell of Cape Cod. The collection was valued at $300,000, but in the end brought over $450,000.

Frank Schmidt and Gary Guyette attributed the high prices for the decoratives to the fact that there was a significantly large group, therefore drawing more attention.

Frank Schmitt and Gary Guyette assembled over 900 decoys from collections and directly out of houses all over the United States and Canada, and the results were a well-balanced group of decoys. For this auction Guyette & Schmidt, Inc, enlisted iCollector to provide live online bidding over the Internet. The impact was fairly small, but positive.