This is a beautiful example of a flying pintail hen carved by Charles Perdew (1874-1863). Perdew was the best known and most prolific decoy carver on the Illinois River, having carved thousands of decoys over a 60 year career. Perdew has also carved a few crow decoys, (there was once a bounty on dead crows in the State of Illinois), but mostly carved puddle ducks, mallards, pintail, green and blue winged teat, canvasback, bluebill, wood and diver ducks and geese. Perdew used a drawknife, wood gouge, whittling knife and a make shift mechanical sanded fashioned from an old treadle sewing machine. Perdew influenced many Illinois carvers, some he even personally taught. Until 1941 Perdew's wife Edna painted most of his work, which is the case with this piece. Edna used wet-on-wet blending and more "combing" which made her style softer. Combing was a technique used by many of the Illinois River carvers to emulate the ducks vermiculation (fine barred lines found on some feathers). Perdew used mostly bold loops painted on a dried base color to detail his feathers. This unique piece is a pintail hen in flight. The base is a the barked knot of a red cedar tree with a wire extending from the center supporting the figure. The base is 2 5/8 inches by 1 7/8 inches and it stands 3 7/8 inches.

Very fine. There is some flaking of the paint along the front edges and a small piece of the right wing is absent.