Ducks Unlimited Podcast

00:00 Katie Burke Hi everybody. Welcome back to the Ducks Unlimited podcast. Today on the podcast, I have a really special guest I'm super excited to have. I have Ms. Gigi Hopkins. Gigi is the author of Massachusetts masterpieces, The Decoy as Art. She's a highly respected decoy restorer, historian, and just connoisseur of decoys. So welcome to the show, Gigi. Oh, hello, hello. I'm really excited about this. So we actually went on a break for the podcast for a little while and you're my

00:26 Gigi Hopkins first interview back. Well, this is my first interview, so. Really? We're well matched.

00:32 Katie Burke Yeah. Oh, good. So I know you've written about things, but you've never been interviewed. Oh, exciting. And I think you might be my first female. Oh, of course. Yes. There's not many females in the decoy world, so we're probably one of a handful.

00:49 Gigi Hopkins Well, gunners too. Yes. My father was a grouse hunter back in the day and he had a friend who was a lady and she was a very fine shot and very rare. Yeah. Yeah.

01:02 Katie Burke I tend to find when you do come across women, they are good shots. Yes.

01:06 Gigi Hopkins Well, my mother could out shoot my dad, but was smart enough not to do it. She was really good with a 410. Parker 410, custom made. That's a nice gun. Oh, it was a very nice gun.

01:21 Katie Burke So let's go back to the very beginning. Let's start there. Sure. So where did you grow up and when did you fall in love with birds? Did that start early?

01:32 Gigi Hopkins I grew up in Dover, Massachusetts in the 40s. My mother had a bird feeder, a window box, which was fairly unusual. And I used to gather handfuls of sunflower seeds and go out and sit under the box and hold my hand, you know, just at the feeder, hoping that a chickadee would land. And they of course didn't. But yeah, so she loved birds. Her family was a family of birders. Think her grandfather made skins back in the day. Anyway, so, and we were in the country and there were many birds around. Dad was a gunner. He was a grouse hunter. Some geese, but primarily grouse. So, you know, there was a lot of land around, a lot of wildlife around. And birds, she had a window feeder and there were a lot of birds around. So yeah, I was exposed happily to all of that early on as just normalness.

02:40 Katie Burke Yeah, I understand that. I had a very similar world that I lived in. So when did, you say your dad's a gunner. So when did decoys and that, when did you become aware of decoys and that kind of medium?

02:54 Gigi Hopkins I walked into Philip de Normandy's house in Lincoln, Mass in 19, I think it was 70 or 71. And there was a shelf above the door as I walked in and I glanced up and there were decoys on the shelf, including shorebird decoys, which I had never seen. Right. I had seen, you know, duck decoys, but I had never seen shorebird decoys. And he had some beauties. He had a Lothar Ponds bird that was to die for. Oh yeah. And we now have a picture of Lothar Ponds, which to me was unbelievable. Anyway, so I saw those and loved them, got to know him, got to restore some of those birds. He was my first client. Okay. And, and it took off from there. He had, he knew other people. He was going to decoy auctions, which it just started a bit later on. And we went down for those and, you know, met other people who collected decoys and were of that world and I sort of knew the language because of what I had grown up around. Right. So it was all pretty easy.

04:11 Katie Burke Yeah. So did you prior to that have an art background or how did you get into? Oh yeah.

04:18 Gigi Hopkins I was an artist and did horse portraits and illustrations. And I was, I was a specialist in the horse and never had any, any choice. I grew up drawing horses, you know, before I could hold a pencil.

04:34 Katie Burke Yeah. That's really funny. I did horse portraits when I was a little girl.

04:42 Gigi Hopkins Yeah. We ought to trade some. I have quite a few. I do.

04:46 Katie Burke I have quite a few. I did them all the way up through high school. And then my private art teacher, she was a professional horse portrait painter. And she painted many of the famous quarter horses and things like that. What was her name? Carol Rourke. R-O-A-R-K. Yeah. Rourke. Okay. And she did a lot of the like barrel racers and things like that. Right. Well, it's, yeah, it's a very common pattern and it would be very interesting to look at. It would. I think. You know, I got, the other day I was doing something with kids and this is off topic, but I was doing something with the museum and one of the little, the young girls that works for me came up to me and she was like, did you like horses when you were young? And I was like, yes. But how, that was the weirdest like stereotype I've ever gotten. I was like, you're correct, but I don't understand why you would guess that.

05:44 Gigi Hopkins Well, when you look at the Walter Farley books, which I grew up with, there must have been a substantial market or a Scribner's would not have been publishing those or whoever published them. I don't know who published them. That's true.

05:58 Katie Burke But they would not have been in the market if there had not been a market. That's true. I read the Saddle Club books as a kid. My friends read Baby-Gidders Club and I read Saddle Club. So there's definitely a thing there. But, and I guess that would put in like, you know, I don't know if they all go into art, but I went into art and then I was always very into, much like yourself, like into the natural world. I didn't really have much. I always wanted to go lean that way. Me too. Yeah. And I wonder if that hall has like something to do with it. It's very interesting.

06:36 Gigi Hopkins I'm sure it is. And when you, when you consider that we're part of earth, it makes perfect sense that anybody with any sensitivity would be paying attention to what's going on around them. Yes. And especially if you're lucky enough to grow up in the country where things are unfolding as they should and you're lucky enough to see that.

07:03 Katie Burke Yes. So I have a question for you. So this might come a little, a different answer from you that I ask, you know, a lot of hunters. And one thing that I have found that is consistent amongst outdoors people is there's a moment in their life that they can remember that like, that all inspiring moment where they, they can remember being out in the woods or on the marsh, that they just kind of felt that they felt that fell in love with it. It was like a connection that they had, even if it's not just one moment or it's like a feeling. And can you remember that? Or do you have memories of like having that connection with nature and how that kind of drove you going forward?

07:46 Gigi Hopkins It was always there. And I had a brother, an older brother who collected snakes and that meant that we were out. I mean, we, you know, Dover was pure country in those days. Yeah. A lot of, nobody was living there.

08:02 Katie Burke So there was a lot of land that was open pastoral land and it was just all around. So when you met, so let's skip back to your, the collector you met who introduced you to those are our poems. So when you met him, how did, so you fall in love with this decoy, which I'm assuming you picked up and handled and like most people who finally pick up one of these decoys, especially from Massachusetts, they, they realize they're not just a tool, they're, they're beautiful. And they have,

08:36 Gigi Hopkins Oh, there are. Yes. There are. We had many craftsmen who were doing the same target, you know, they were all doing the black duck or whatever. And each one of them was a strong artist and did it in that voice and came out with a, you know, an effective tool, but also a beautiful piece of work. And that was a, that was a thing of, of, I think, pride for these guys that they, you know, could make something beautiful as well as useful. And you see it in their tool making.

09:16 Katie Burke Their tools work beautifully and are usually beautifully designed. Right. I mean, even to the point that carvers are using some of their tools today. Sure. Okay. I, I could go a whole direction with that, but I'm going to keep trying to keep it. So with your relationship with this first collector, when do you, how do you get introduced to like the idea of restoring? Like, and what was that process like, like for an education side of it? What did you have to learn to start restoring? Did you learn like, what was the process of learning what to do there?

09:51 Gigi Hopkins I was a bird carver from Mass Audubon. That means that I was looking at birds and seeing them and able to draw them. Well, and I'd come out of drawing horses, which is, you know, they're very complicated horses and they do a lot of things and their limbs are very specific. Everything about a horse is very specific. So if you're seeing that and drawing that as a kid, you're, you've got this, this sense of seeing things and grasping them and drawing them. Right. Putting them in paper or even in clay or carving soap for that matter. Yeah. So, so I had that whole background. The bird thing was a real jump because a horse has legs, a head, ears, expression, eyes, expression. The whole body is expressive. This pile of fluff where you don't know what's going on. And you can't see the wing, you know, and then they're so far away. Right.

10:58 Katie Burke So birds are tough. And you wouldn't think they are. But that's funny to say that because the way you describe it, because you would think they would be easier and that they're, you know, a simpler shape.

11:09 Gigi Hopkins Oh, right. No, I found them. And I, you know, at that point I was, I was spending time at Mass Audubon. And so I was around birdie people, but no, they're, they're, it's a whole different creature, the way that wing folds in and the wrist disappears, you can't, you can't see the wrist and it's, it's just, it's a whole different thing from a horse where you've got the four legs doing, you know, what four legs do. Right. It's, they're very challenging. I found.

11:45 Katie Burke Like with horses, the expression is easy. Like you can see the expression, you can see the personality. Whereas I'm assuming giving a bird a personality in that way is you're almost, do you have to take liberties in some respect or you have to say true to that?

12:00 Gigi Hopkins Because no, you can't take liberties. You have to be true to the subject. Right. I think, I mean, there are people who, you know, who, who I don't consider very good.

12:12 Katie Burke Right. Yeah. I guess it's just more subtle in a way.

12:16 Gigi Hopkins Oh, very much. Yeah. Very much. Yeah. They're hard.

12:20 Katie Burke Yeah. So what was the first, do you know who the first carver you restored?

12:26 Gigi Hopkins It was from Philip de Normandy. And I think it was a Holmes. I'm not sure. This was 1971 or about. So it was a good while ago. I did one piece for him. Okay. Oh, I know what it was. It was a, it was a Kroll mini brand with a head missing. And I said, if you can find another one with a head, you know, I can, I can replace the missing head. And he did. He got a second piece and you know, all those Kroll minis are pretty similar. Right. He got another one and I copied the head and it went beautifully. And he showed it to another guy and the other guy had a huge collection. And I started working on his collection. And that was, that was two or three years where I was just, you know, back to back working on his pieces and he was an absolutely lovely guy with two lovely daughters. And, and, you know, just they were pure pleasure to be around. So that was wonderful fun.

13:32 Katie Burke So when your work, so let's say this crowd, just when you started or did this come later, like, did you start learning about the Carver and his technique at when you first started or were you kind of picking that up as you got more into restoring or how did that?

13:50 Gigi Hopkins That's something that you look at piece. It's missing a wing tip. You've got the other wing tip. The whole piece tells you everything that you need to know in order to replace the missing bit. You don't really have to know much about the Carver. You just need to focus on the piece and what's missing and what's around you that educates you as to what the missing part would look like. So it's a very specific kind of focus.

14:26 Katie Burke Right. And even in, so I'm guessing that gets even more complicated when you start thinking about like with Massachusetts decoys, I think too, with the way they painted them and having to match, especially some of these shorebirds. I mean, they have very, I mean, it's simple paint, but it's not at all simple.

14:44 Gigi Hopkins Yeah, I'm looking at, I'm looking at a life-size, prole, snipe, black-bellied plover and woodcock and Kroll did very complicated paint patterns compared to most of the decoy carvers because he was carving for a crowd, mostly Harvard boys at first. And they all had handled these birds because they shot them. So they knew what they looked like. And Kroll was shooting them too. Right. And so when you look at a Kroll painted decorative, which is what I'm looking at there, I'm looking at these three birds that are mounted on the typical Kroll stone, you're getting a very complicated piece of work compared to the standard decoy, which, you know, you jammed a dowel into the dowel hole and stuck it on the beach and shot over it. Right. You didn't need a lot of fussiness with that. But some of these carvers did it anyway. Like, absolutely. They couldn't not. Yeah. They were artists.

15:56 Katie Burke So that's something I want to talk to you a lot about, like why Massachusetts? Like why in that? I mean, it is a lot on the East coast, but there's something about Massachusetts where they, they are more artisans than they were a lot of these in some other regions. I mean, I don't want to say just everywhere, cause that's not true. I mean, there's definitely other regions that had beautiful decoys, but Massachusetts in particular…

16:21 Gigi Hopkins Massachusetts is very strong in having a variety of makers who made their own view of the given subject. And I've always thought it was because Massachusetts goes back to 1620 and who is going to be coming here with what sort of ability in order to start a colony. You're going to need people who are craftsmen. You need people who can make stuff. And it doesn't matter if it's a shoe or a coat or a wagon wheel or what it is. It's, it's got to be something that's useful and that's beautifully enough made that it works. And most, I think craftsmen who make stuff are already ahead of the game because they're working with materials they enjoy working with and are good at. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to do it. So they're already responding to, you know, whatever it is. And I think most of the people who came to Massachusetts originally were able to make stuff that was useful and therefore worked well. Yeah. And that's craftsmanship and design and execution. And I just think it goes with the territory. What good are you in Plymouth? You know, you can't do stuff that's useful. Right. So I think, I think it goes with the territory of, you know, the early settlers here. And I think that all of that craftsmanship was valued.

18:13 Katie Burke And that was passed down. Yeah. Like that ability. Absolutely. Do you think they just had like a mindset of if you're going to do something, you're going to do it well and I don't think a better word, but you know, cause it's just well enough to work. Yeah. And even like they go, I mean, they go beyond like just work. They're not, they kind of go beyond it being a tool. I mean, I know they weren't thinking of it that way, but it is. It's kind of like more so like, you know, I mean, I think there are value in other decoys, but the more like there's lots of decoys, like let's say, I mean, not all of North Carolina, but like the root head decoys, which are really neat decoys, but they, you know, use what the material they had. They made a functional decoy, but it's a blocky, you know, it's a, it's more of a blocky style decoy. Whereas the Massachusetts, they're sleek. They are elegant. They have an intelligent design. It's much, it's just a very different. Yeah. They're beautiful.

19:19 Gigi Hopkins Yes. A Loser Poems is a beautiful piece of work.

19:24 Katie Burke Yeah, it is. It's very, it's incredible.

19:26 Gigi Hopkins Yeah. You want to pick it up and handle it rather than use it. And I think, again, I think that's craftsmanship, which if you're making stuff that works, you're a craftsman. And if it works well, then you're, you're, you know, you're a designer and you respond to beauty, I think.

19:53 Katie Burke I mean, I just think it's that clean. One thing that I found interesting, because I didn't enter the, I was a, I grew up duck hunting and I grew up around waterfowlers and all that. But my entrance into decoys and everything kind of really came from my other interests, which I was art history and then museum masters major. So I came in from the art history and museum world into the decoy side of things. And, but I also knew about hunting and in Mississippi, we don't have wood decoys like that, we just have no history of it. It's kind of, it's odd, but there's just kind of, it's bare there's no, no history of calls or decoys. So I never knew about it until I started working in this job and like, and got in college a little bit.

20:43 Gigi Hopkins So I'm assuming that you didn't need them in Mississippi. Yes, that's kind of the thought. The birds must have been so plentiful to shoot and acquire that you just didn't need that step.

20:56 Katie Burke Yes. So, and so it's more like the thought of it is, is that particularly in that time period, we were hunting flooded timber here in Mississippi. So by the time you would use calls, which we didn't have call makers, but you could acquire calls nearby and Memphis and Arkansas and you would call them in. And once they were close enough in the woods, you didn't, they didn't need decoys to, they were already in. So we didn't really need decoys to get them that close. So that's kind of the thought. Yeah. Yeah. There's just not a history of it here. It's, it's very interesting. And so I was very unfamiliar with historic decoys until I was in my early twenties and, but I found really interesting from coming from the art side of thing is how collectors, they won't refer to them as artists. They call them they're like carvers and with handling decoys, you know, like with collectors too, they handle them so roughly, like they're not really careful. And you've been in this since the seventies and I'm guessing they've gotten better.

22:07 Gigi Hopkins Well, the interesting thing is that the, the decoy world gave birth to the contemporary carving world. And when you've got Larry Barr's making, you know, one of his pieces, it really snaps your head around if you've been thinking of these things as blocks, you know, and not as expressions of whatever complexity it is toward the actual duck. You know, any, any decoy maker has got stuff going on in his head that you probably wouldn't want to know about. About, you know, his relationship to what, to what he's seeing and drawing and carving and painting, you've got to be an artist of some sort to pull that off. Yeah. So who's going to be doing it? Artists are going to be doing it. So you're sort of self-defined there.

23:16 Katie Burke Yeah. I always agree with that. It just sounded so interesting that they like, won't say that. And I'm just like, I mean, how is a carver not an artist?

23:28 Gigi Hopkins Oh my goodness. Aren't they silly? They are. They are so silly. Well, and when you look at, when you look at a rose grouse and look at it and look at the beauty of that plumage and the bird, and when you sit watching a bird, I never shot one or wanted to. So I used to sit and, you know, watch them and see them in the wild. And I mean, they're just gorgeous and they're cute. They're just cute. Yeah. Don't tell my father I ever said that.

24:05 Katie Burke Well, our other host, Mike Brazier, he's a biologist and he's got, I took him turkey hunting for the first time this year. And I can't believe he'd never been turkey hunting because of where he's from and being a waterfowl biologist and very into birds. But a turkey is a new thing up here. I know y'all have them like yard chickens up there. They're like all over the place. Oh God, I know.

24:29 Gigi Hopkins They're attacking themselves in your uptown.

24:32 Katie Burke He's introduced me to, you know, he's a very big birder and it's made me more interested in birds and like songbirds and things like that. And we went turkey hunting. Good to him. Yes. And we went turkey hunting and we've been, while we're turkey hunting, he's got his little app out telling me about all the birds that are coming by. It's like, how have you not been turkey hunting just for the birding opportunities is what I told him.

24:57 Gigi Hopkins Exactly. And part of the reason that my father loved gunning was because it got him out into land that he loved. Yeah. It, you know, the weekend was a time to get away from the responsibilities that you have as a husband and father and get into land that makes you happy and gets you away. And the birds are kind of an excuse for that, I always thought.

25:26 Katie Burke Oh yes. You know, I agree with that. My father's similar, you know, I think he's been turkey hunting almost every day this season, the only turkey that I killed a turkey earlier this season, but he hasn't shot, he doesn't care really anymore. He just likes to go and be out there. Exactly. Exactly. He's killed enough turkeys. He's sad. He's like, and he'll…

25:49 Gigi Hopkins Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. My older brother, the same thing. He just, he had already done that and, you know, show that he could do it. Right. Which was an important piece of it. And… I agree with that. And they like being out there. Yeah. Why? Cause it's beautiful. It's natural history. It's unfolding all around you and you're lucky enough to be a piece of it.

26:17 Katie Burke Yeah. It kind of gives you this perspective on your place. Yes. Exactly.

26:23 Gigi Hopkins There's so much more. Yes, there is boys. And I love them dearly. You know, don't get me wrong. But, but you need the broader knowledge of your conviction to it all. Right. Once you get separated, you do bad things.

26:44 Katie Burke Yeah. And I think that, you know, it's interesting to say that like in working for Ducks the Limited and like one of our things is we keep trying to push that, you know, you want to be part of this bigger piece because it takes all these pieces working together. Yeah. To make it work. Habitat. Yeah. To make it work. I'm going to take a quick break here because I want to talk about Habitat for a little bit too. But let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. We were talking about Habitat and I just was… I want to talk about what we met this fall when we went to over near U-Forth Mass Audubon, that new property. And I just want to say talking about Habitat, like I've been around there because my husband's from Westboro and they live in Yarmouth now. And I don't think I realized that a property like that existed that close to Boston. And it was magical, like to see the, like the river there and everything. Oh, it's amazing. You mentioned, you know, there was the, when you first started restoring decoys that you started attending auctions. Were you also going to decoy shows? Were they happening at that time as well?

28:32 Gigi Hopkins It was interesting because I was a bird carver and I went down to Salisbury, Maryland to the first Wirt Foundation bird carving show, which was 1971. Okay. It was a long time ago. And then the Civic Center burned down and they moved to Ocean City. And by that time I had met Larry Barth and some other wonderful people and was going down just for the pleasure of seeing their work. Right. But yes, initially I entered shows and I was extremely lurky. So I figured, you know, rather than, I thought, I won't push this luck. I'll get down as a spectator from this point forward. And I had a wonderful time, the wonderful folks and, you know, some of my best friends have come out of that world of bird carving, which is, you know, parallels decoy making exactly and comes out of it. It comes out of it. The Wirt Foundation, you know, was founded on Lemmon Steve Ward fan sakes, you know, two of the best decoy makers in this country.

29:48 Katie Burke A hundred percent. Yeah. They just had the competition, I think it was last weekend.

29:52 Gigi Hopkins Yes, it is that time of year, isn't it?

29:56 Katie Burke Yeah. I believe I was on the phone with John Sullivan. I think, yeah, he said he was going down. He's always been on the board for it. He's from Maryland. But so how, how many years did you attend the ward competition?

30:11 Gigi Hopkins I entered it. I think I entered for about two years and I just was really lucky. And I just thought, okay, let's, let's leave, you know, when it's a good time to leave and get down as a, as a spectator. And, and I did that for decades and loved every bit of it. And of course, when you're going down, you're meeting migrants that are coming north, which as you get out to, you know, to have your meal or get your gas, you're hearing migrants in the trees, all the warblers that are heading up to Massachusetts and get this preview that I just loved, loved, loved. And then you get down to Ocean City and my God, the birds are all over the place. Laurie and I used to go out birding. Yeah. You know, it was, it was just fabulous.

31:10 Katie Burke So when you first entered the ward, how many people do you think entered those first few competitions? Like when did it become what it is now? Like, is it huge?

31:21 Gigi Hopkins Yeah, it is huge. Um, but there were, there, I happened to remember that on the first year I entered a piece, I think it was the first year and there were 27 professional songbirds. On the table at the time. So that's not bad for a first year.

31:47 Katie Burke And so they still had the individual categories like waterfowl and songbirds. They were still separating it. Absolutely. Okay. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Cause now there's, I can't remember how many categories there are, but that, yeah. Okay. I just didn't know if it was like one, just a group of carvers competing, but they were separating them out.

32:07 Gigi Hopkins No, they had, they had a songbird division, which I entered. They had a shorebird division, which I entered and a game bird. Um, so I had a grouse in one, a yellow legs in another and a chickadee in another and did very nicely. This is good. So I was hooked and you know, meeting other carvers is such a big deal. And it's something Larry Barth is the best bird carver in the country and always has been, and he's a beloved friend. He's a beloved friend of Mass Audubon. And, um, and, and she was feeling the same thing, you know, he'd been working in Western Pennsylvania all by himself. He didn't know that. All by himself. He didn't know that other carvers existed. And you got together and discovered not only were there other carvers, but there were people doing wonderful stuff all by themselves and you got exposed to this huge array of, you know, just breathtaking work and got to know these folks with whom you could totally talk shop and completely go out and, and bird in the marsh in Salisbury and have an absolute blast. Yeah. I didn't think about it. And see birds flying past the moon, you know, when they're waiting north. I was just wondering.

33:45 Katie Burke Yeah. I never thought, I mean, it makes perfect sense, like, cause at that time there's no internet, there's nothing to connect you to people and it, I'm sure it still was, you know, it's not a popular career. Like, it's not like there's a lot of people doing it everywhere. So I'm sure that exposure to like-minded people not only is reassuring, but I'm sure, inspiring. It was very stimulating. Yeah.

34:12 Gigi Hopkins And I can sure you want to go home and create after you're with all those. Oh, and you saw uses of materials that you just, you know, hadn't imagined. Yeah. It was, it was fabulous.

34:26 Katie Burke So what were you working with when you first started? What, what like, what were you working with and how did that change?

34:32 Gigi Hopkins I was using basswood, the sweetest wood in the world, if you're a carver. And I was selling a series of cast pieces at Mass Audubon that I was casting from my own clay models. But I was also carving on the side, you know, before Ocean City or before Salisbury as I had time. So I was, I was restoring stuff and making birds and, you know, doing, doing the carving on the side really, cause I was, you know, making a small living, doing, you know, the restoration work, which.

35:20 Katie Burke Was that taking up most of your time, the restoration?

35:24 Gigi Hopkins It, it did. It took off wonderfully, you know, because Philip had a wonderful collection of birds. The second client that I worked for had a wonderful collection of birds. And I just went through the whole collection piece after piece after piece. And, you know, again, word spread. So I was never out of work and always kind of behind, but having, having a wonderful time handling fabulous stuff and getting to play with it.

36:00 Katie Burke Yeah. So were you kind of left to your, like, they just entrust you with it or were they, did some clients have more input? How did that work?

36:09 Gigi Hopkins Well, I, I, you know, one, one client would, would hand me a piece and I'd do it and ship it back and he would be thrilled to bits and I would make great care to do, you know, the best I was able to. And then another piece would come in from the same owner and I'd go through his whole collection, basically. So I, and I didn't go look for other clients because each client would keep me fully busy, busy and there was no, no, no need to go further afield. Yeah.

36:50 Katie Burke They would just, you'd finish with one and someone, they would send you to another person. Yeah, absolutely. That makes sense. It was great fun. When I talked to Cameron, when he was doing that, he said similar, like you just,

37:03 Gigi Hopkins there's too many, like he stopped doing it because he didn't get to carve as much. Yeah, exactly. Well, then I got into carousel horses and if you can imagine, you know, the shipping is a little different, but you can imagine a full-size carousel horse in your small apartment. That's what I say.

37:26 Katie Burke Where did you put your carousel horse?

37:30 Gigi Hopkins Oh, in the bedroom. On everything else. And you know, the hind leg is missing and you get a, you get a car behind the leg. I mean, that is a ball. And, and yeah, so I was doing that simultaneously.

37:49 Katie Burke Well, that's very different styles too. Like you're going from a very like earthy, you know, natural tone paints to like a much more like a little like exaggerated fun, colorful.

38:04 Gigi Hopkins Well, the original paint, most the pieces are the horses that I was working on. They're more natural. Yeah. They're, they're original paint and they were all painted in the twenties. And there's a series of colors that were popular in the twenties that are quite beautiful, you know, the salary and the horses themselves were in fact, one of my silliest moments I was working on a horse. It was lying on its side in my bedroom and I was removing 51 coats of paint and primer to get to original paint beneath, but I wasn't doing it, you know, level by level. Fortunately, the original paint had a coat of varnish on it and I could lift from the varnish up the entire layer of 51 coats of paint and primer, which is very slow, but extremely gratifying. But there came a point when I was working, this was, you know, a Bay horse brown and I'm working and all of a sudden I hit white and I think, oh, golly, I've gone down to the primer. So I backed off and went in from another angle, you know, this huge layer of 51 coats of paint and primer and I lift again and know there is white paint, not brown paint. And I'm thinking, oh, I'm messing this up because I'm going, I'm somehow getting down to the primer and getting below the original paint. Well, no, the horse was a pinto. It took a day for it to, you know, tilt your end in a small brain.

40:02 Katie Burke 51 coats of paint. That's, well, you don't have to do that. Hopefully, I can't imagine any decoys being 51 coats of paint. I guess because they're carousel horses and they just get ridden and used. They get painted every other year. Yeah, they just keep painting.

40:17 Gigi Hopkins And if the thing was set up in 1890 or 1910, you have a lot of paint. And it's, the fabulous thing is that the original paint is in superb condition because it's been covered up, you know, since three years in. Right. And so, you know, that if you love old paint, it's pretty wonderful.

40:46 Katie Burke Yeah. So is it, what paint are they using? Lead paint?

40:50 Gigi Hopkins Like they would for, what do they use for? Oh, yeah, they were using lead paint. Yeah. And I was messing with, you know, I mean, when you're lifting paint off like that, you're getting a lot of dust and stuff. So we don't like to think about that.

41:05 Katie Burke No, I just don't think. I think you're doing okay. You're pretty healthy. You've lived a long life. I don't think it's affected you too much.

41:16 Gigi Hopkins Well, I used to be burning. But…

41:21 Katie Burke Well, I'm pretty gray too, and I'm only 36. So…

41:28 Gigi Hopkins Now, where do you live? You're…

41:30 Katie Burke I'm in Memphis. So headquarters for Ducks of the Limited is here in Memphis. Yeah. So we're here and we have lots of birds right now. They're everywhere. We actually were out at our little park next door and we're working with them on some stuff. So we got to see a lot yesterday, but… Good. Yeah. So, and I'm from Mississippi originally. So I'm from like an hour south of here. I grew up in the Mississippi Delta. So in the middle of nowhere.

41:59 Gigi Hopkins Now I sort of birded a Pacha train. In fact, that's where I saw my one painted bunting was the south coast of Lake Pontchartrain. It was instructed by the local Audubon Society.

42:15 Katie Burke Yeah. So they… My mom is from south Louisiana. So I grew up going… She's from Manchac, which is between Lake Pontchartrain and like Maura Paul. It's in the past. And so I grew up going there like once a month. But when you were there, did you get to meet any carvers while you were there? Cause they have a very rich carving tradition in south Louisiana.

42:38 Gigi Hopkins Yeah, they do. But, you know, I was pretty shy at the time and I actually did meet both of the Ward brothers. Oh, friendly. Yeah. Yeah. That was very exciting. They were very kind, Steve and Les. Was it Les? Lem. Lem. Lemuel Ward. Yeah. Boy, that was a while ago.

43:06 Katie Burke What were they doing at that point? Were they doing more decorative stuff then?

43:10 Gigi Hopkins They were just visiting the show. Okay. So…

43:17 Katie Burke Did you know who they were at the time? Were you aware of them?

43:22 Gigi Hopkins Not as much as later. Of course. I mean, that was, you know, that's early 70s. Yeah. Which is at the start of all of this.

43:34 Katie Burke Right. I mean, have you even… I'm guessing you've probably restored a Ward brothers decoy at this point, at some point in your life. Oh, yeah. Well, I'm guessing at that you probably hadn't even… Have you had interacted with their decoys at all before you met them or no? Or not that you knew of? I don't think so. Wow. Because you were mostly doing Mass… You know, New England collectors, I'm guessing.

43:58 Gigi Hopkins No, no. I know. I've done all sorts of stuff from all over the country. Yeah. You know, there are beautiful, beautiful schools of decoy making all over. Oh, yes.

44:13 Katie Burke So what would be your favorite that you've worked with? You have a favorite? That's a Toffee. I know. That's trying to like… Yeah.

44:21 Gigi Hopkins Each region has its own result in the decoys and their own way of having gotten there. And the men who were fortunate enough to lay knife to wood.

44:37 Katie Burke So do you prefer a good… So I guess say that like, do you prefer nice paint over sculpture or…

44:46 Gigi Hopkins No, the whole thing has to be complete. The whole thing. Like a Luther Poem's short bird is, you know, is a thing complete in itself. Yes. And any of the good work, the design is superb, the carving is superb, the paint is superb. It all goes together. I, you know, the whole thing, the design, the carving, the paint, it all has to come together. And I was just saying the Ward brothers, you know, the two Ward brothers, you look at their birds and you've got one carving and one painting and they're absolutely magnificent.

45:31 Katie Burke And so much personality. Oh yeah.

45:34 Gigi Hopkins Anyway, you know. Yeah.

45:36 Katie Burke You can't pick. You don't have to.

45:41 Gigi Hopkins No, I know. I'd have a hard time. I've always had a soft spot for Luther Poems. I keep mentioning that name because his birds are rare and I did find a photograph of him, which blew me away. That's in the book. It's the only known photo of him. And he just, he had a sense of design that, that I respond to. And I think it's as simple as that, you know, the stuff that you respond to and there other stuff that you don't. And I think, you know, I think it's as clean as that, that I love his work because it just kind of fits. Yeah. And it does what it needs to do.

46:24 Katie Burke And it's a piece of art and you can't keep your hands off it. Yeah. His abstract like paint pattern is, I wish I could, I wish this wasn't, you could, I could let the audience see what it looked like. But the way he did it, it's beautiful. And it's not abstract to be abstract.

46:43 Gigi Hopkins And it's fast and it's loose, you know, bang, bang, bang, bang, and we're done. We're not doing something fussy here. We're making a decoy. We're going to gun over it.

46:54 Katie Burke But everything comes together just beautifully. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. The one in the, your book, the ruddy turnstone, that thing. Oh yes.

47:07 Gigi Hopkins Would you mind owning that? No, not at all.

47:13 Katie Burke Too bad Paul Tudor Jones still has it.

47:17 Gigi Hopkins He doesn't appreciate it. You know, we've been to his ginormous place, Cambridge, wherever the hell it is in London, he doesn't care. It's just more stuff and it's down in the TV room. Oh God.

47:35 Katie Burke I should have. We had his ducks for a while. Like we first opened the museum and we had his Lincoln, but they're all now in his new camp in Georgia. So he had to build, he built a house for his, his ducks.

47:56 Gigi Hopkins So I've asked all the shorebirds are in Massachusetts and all the ducks are in Georgia. Well, that's sort of silly.

48:03 Katie Burke Yep. I got to keep the Lincoln though for a full year. It was great. Oh, that's nice.

48:08 Gigi Hopkins Cause Lincoln birds are clean. He had the wood duck, the Lincoln wood duck. Oh God. That's a, that's a bird and a half. Oh, that's beautiful. She, he was so good. So the elegance of that thing and the quietness of it, you know, it's not showing off.

48:30 Katie Burke Yeah. You, you, I read in, I read your book and I love that you use the word, the quiet, the use quietness to describe some of these birds. And it's true. It's just like this understated beauty, beauty that comes out of them that you really, we say this to new collectors and people who want to get into them. Like you have to go to a show or auction and handle them. Cause there's just something you're never going to get from a picture.

48:58 Gigi Hopkins You just have to go see them. Exactly. And the sense of age is as important as the piece. You know, the fact that this was done 50 years ago as a working, it's a working tool. And I'm not talking about decorative stuff. I mean, you know, the working birds, the Lincolns are all working birds and, God, there are pictures of him with yards just full of deacons. Oh my goodness.

49:30 Katie Burke Oh, I know. I know I was going through your book again and I was going through the carvers and it's so hard to read some of the stories. Cause I feel like every story ends with, and a sack of decoys was taken somewhere and burned. And it's just like, how many decoys did they just burn? A barrel of decoys taken and burned. It's heartbreaking, but they never thought of them that way. So they just didn't, they didn't, especially the people, you know, cause I'm guessing they gave them a lot of, you know, carver camps and clubs and things like that. And the people who were, you know, they, the people who were working with the decoys that weren't related to the carver in any way, they just thought of them as these things we shoot over. And like, yeah, yeah, they threw them under the camp. Actually, we're happy if they did throw them under the camp, because maybe someone later picked that back up and they made them back out. But the burning, I was just like, oh my gosh. I have one selfish question before we go. Cause so being a woman and being in this field and being around all these collectors and carvers, you've been doing this a lot longer than me. And, and I find myself like it's still, I mean, there are more women and it's great. And there are more, there are starting to be more women there. I mean, though it's rare that you're not there with your spouse, like it tends to be like I'm very usually like by my being a woman without like my husband doesn't come with me things he doesn't, he couldn't care less about wooden decoys. Yeah. So he's not usually with me and I'm here for work.

51:17 Gigi Hopkins How? Don't bother me. I'm, I'm playing with my carburetor.

51:20 Katie Burke Yeah. Yeah. Well, no, he's not that either. He's more into video games, but. Oh, that's worse. So he, so like, what was that like for you? Like going through that? And I mean, I've been very welcomed. Like I've never really had a lot of an issue, but was that difficult? Do you have any advice?

51:43 Gigi Hopkins It was not the slightest bit difficult because people were looking at the work and, and you know, all of the guys that were my collectors were pretty neat people. And I enjoyed that. And having grown up with my dad in a gunning tradition, I knew the language. You know, I've plucked ducks and grouse and so I've had hands on in that. And a lot of these collectors aren't gunners too. Right. They're collecting art. Although they wouldn't call it that. Yeah. So I, you know, I grew up with two older brothers and a father and my mother was out of the scene early on. So I just never had any problem with the fact that I was around guys. So, you know, they were who I hung out with.

52:39 Katie Burke Right.

52:39 Gigi Hopkins And they had this material and appreciated it. And it was great. And I had a lovely time and they always treated me to dinner, which was sweet. So some of our advantages, which I was not beyond taking advantage of. I don't blame you. And their wives were pretty neat. Yeah. Most of the, yeah, most of the wives that I met were really nice ladies, interested in stuff, not necessarily the same stuff. But I just, I was very lucky and my clients were a great group of people. And I had a ball and I was handling stuff that just took your breath away.

53:23 Katie Burke No, I, I agree. I haven't had any issues. I've been welcomed and people have, you know, and I grew up with a dad, hunting with a dad and a brother. And, you know, I'm comfortable in these situations, but yeah. And I will say, I have to agree the people I have met, I mean, you included in Amy with Mass Audubon, I've just, it's made my life better. And I'm so thankful that I fell into it.

53:51 Gigi Hopkins And yeah, that's, yeah, that's, that's what it's been. It's been falling into it. But they are, they're neat people. They love to be outdoors. Amy's absolutely wonderful. She's brilliant. And you wouldn't necessarily guess that. And she's completely warm. And I mean, she, she's an unusual group of attributes and, you know, being brilliant is there, but it's very quiet. It's very, you know, it's a very low key. You would not guess that you're talking with a dazzlingly bright person who sees things, which is not that common. One of the things that a carver needs to do is see stuff. You need to see the bird. You need to understand it. You need to make a pattern, see the pattern. Going out on a walk with Larry Barth, when you're pointing at little things, you know, that are visually pleasing that nobody else would even see. And you're finally with someone who's seeing the same stuff and pointing to it and saying, look, and Amy's the same way. She's got really good eyesight and, you know, she can look at art and get it immediately and you can talk about any aspect of that painting or sculpture with her. And she's right there. And that's a ball. That is just such a pleasure.

55:23 Katie Burke Yeah. Especially with you spending your whole life doing it. It's nice to find a friend that you can do that with. Oh, wonderful. Yeah. And I'm sure working on the book was just a joy.

55:34 Gigi Hopkins Oh, it was a blast. Yes, absolutely.

55:37 Katie Burke Well, I've taken up a lot of your time, so, which I have really enjoyed. So before we go, we end this, can you, do you have anything you'd like to leave, say, or leave with our audience?

55:51 Gigi Hopkins I would really appreciate the natural world of whatever you've got of it left around you, get out into it because it's pretty wonderful. That it is. And yeah, I mean, butterflies migrating. Are you kidding me? I mean, come on. You know, and you see a monarch. Couple of years ago, I was in the community garden and there's a big horse barn. And I saw this single monarch flying ground level the way they do. And it went up and over the barn and continued south. And I thought, oh, wow. That's just amazing. And I've seen them flying down, you know, you're walking along the shore of the Cape and they're two feet over the water, you know, and they could be over the shore where you're walking, but no, they're over the bloody water. And they're flying south along the water line.

57:00 Katie Burke And you're thinking, holy moly, do you know where that butterfly's going? Yeah, I know. It's crazy.

57:07 Gigi Hopkins And it's got scales on the wing. And if you touch the wing, you knock the scales off. Oh, my God. You know, that's that sort of stuff is enough to keep you engaged and in love with everything out there and appreciating it, even though we know nothing, you know, really, relatively speaking. And I just think, you know, if you gut it around, get out there and look, you know, see it, hear it, appreciate it, because it's amazing. It's neat. It is. And we're small in comparison. Well, yeah, but we're a part of it, which is most peculiar, considering our impact on the planet at this point. I mean, the whole thing is very mysterious. I don't pretend to understand it.

58:04 Katie Burke We try and fail over and over again. Yeah, exactly. And the trying is the important stuff. That's the important part. Well, Gigi, thank you so much. This has been great. You're very welcome. Anytime.