oun 



tl Waterfowl Museum 



Core S 



It will be called the Core Sound 

 Waterfowl Museum, and it will, of 

 course, feature the trademark decoys 

 carved by local legends. But its 

 backers say the facility will go 

 beyond that. 



"This is not a decoy museum. 

 It's a people museum," says Carl 

 Huff, a carver, Carteret County 

 commissioner and member of the 

 museum board of directors. "It's 

 about the heritage and history of 

 eastern North Carolina. It's about 

 people and personalities and history, 

 and decoys are part of that." 



The museum is an outgrowth of 

 the Core Sound Decoy Carvers 



Guild, which began about 10 years ago. 

 A group of local carvers came together 

 then to ponder how to perpetuate their 

 craft and preserve the work left behind 

 by old-time carvers. 



"A lot of the older decoy makers 

 were leaving us," Huff says. "We 

 realized some of this heritage and 

 artwork needed to be preserved." When 

 the local doctor's office closed, the 

 community lessened the loss by turning 

 the old clinic on Harkers Island's main 

 road into temporary museum quarters. 



The new 20,000-square-foot 

 museum is slated for 16 acres at Shell 

 Point, near the tip of the island. The land 

 is adjacent to the National Park 



Service's Cape Lookout National 

 Seashore headquarters and is leased 

 from the service under long-term 

 arrangements. In addition to the 

 building, the complex will feature 

 nature trails and wildlife and 

 waterfowl observation stations 

 overlooking ponds and wetlands. 

 Construction began this year. 



Fund-raising is still in progress 

 to amass the more than $2 million 

 needed to complete the building 

 and grounds. Funds come from 

 memberships, donations, sales at 

 the museum gift shop and the 

 annual Core Sound Decoy Festival 

 in December. □ 



Festival Details 



The 1997 Core Sound Decoy Festival runs Dec. 6-7 at the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum, 1205 Island Road 

 on Harkers Island, and the neighboring elementary school. The festival features decoy carving and painting contests; 

 demonstrations, displays and sales of new and old decoys; and other activities related to carving, hunting and waterfowl 

 Admission is $5. For more information, call 919/728-1500 or point your browser to http//w ww.coresound.com. □ 



Banks, making decoys for the hunts. He 

 continued to make the birds in his spare 

 time for his former employer after he 

 went into the construction business at 

 Harkers Island. 



Gail, a Raleigh native, had neither 

 hunted nor carved when she first picked 

 up a block of wood under her husband's 

 tutelage. The career change came when 

 her pregnancy with Caroline, now 13, 

 put an end to her participation in 

 construction work. Gail claims she had 

 no previous inkling of artistic talent. 



"It was something I just took to," 

 she says. The Corwins eventually turned 

 the part-time enterprise into full-time 

 and opened the store. Their birds range 

 in price from $30 to $100. 



Bernie cuts and shapes the birds at 

 a workshop. Gail paints them while she 

 minds the store. Their birds are "decora- 

 tive slicks," meaning the wood is not 

 textured. The intricate feather patterns 



come from Gail's brush on the smooth 

 surface. The Corwins co-sign each piece 

 and turn out perhaps 3,000 birds a year. 



"Some people do it as a hobby," 

 Gail says. "We do it for work. That's 

 not to say we don't enjoy it. We 

 wouldn't want to do anything else." 



Bernie, 41, and Gail, 39, are two 

 decades younger than many of their 

 counterparts and represent something of 

 a new generation of carvers. Their 

 daughter, Caroline, is perhaps the next. 



Carving since she was tiny, 

 Caroline has won almost every junior 

 carving competition she's entered. She 

 loves to hunt, and last Halloween, the 

 pretty teen-ager with long blond curls 

 costumed herself as a duck blind. She is 

 saving the money she makes from her 

 decoys for a hunting dog. 



A youngster with a handful of 

 wood is a wonderful sight to the older 

 carvers. Worried their art was fading 



and old decoys were lost and destroyed, 

 seven of them gathered 10 years ago to 

 form the Core Sound Decoy Carvers 

 Guild. Membership now stands at 300, 

 and the movement has inspired a 

 campaign for a grand museum to tell the 

 story of decoys, decoy carving, water- 

 fowl and hunting in Down East heritage. 



Meanwhile, carvers come together 

 on the wide front porch of the museum's 

 temporary quarters. Sitting in rocking 

 chairs, using fish boxes for tables, they 

 exchange tips and stories as they whittle 

 and sand and rasp wood into decoys, 

 and chat with visitors who drop by to 

 watch. 



"There's no secrets," Salter says, 

 after he explains to a novice how to sand 

 a groove on a sandpiper's head for a 

 more realistic eye. "Anybody that comes 

 along and wants to know, we'll show 

 them how to do it. We're trying to pass 

 this on." □ 



COASTWATCH 15 



