The hunter pulls a wooden decoy out of his sack -- a loon, black with white spots -- and he places it in the lake, shoving it gently toward deeper waters. He gives a few blows on the duck call and hides in the bushes with his rifle to wait for the flock of loons to arrive.
The decoys made in Taiwan's Sanyi Duck Treasure Shop (
Hunting ducks commercially was banned in the US in 1918, but loyal followers of the sport and those enchanted by its rustic charm have kept up the demand for hand-crafted duck decoys. Native Americans used floating duck decoys made of straw before the arrival of white Europeans, sometimes covering them with duck skins. The mid-1800s saw an explosion of hand-carved wood decoys, and the combination of pragmatism and beautiful craftsmanship have made the items a favorite among folk-art collectors. In the 1970s, North American entrepreneurs introduced the lucrative art of wooden-decoy making to Sanyi (
PHOTOS: SONG CHIH-HSIUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
The predominantly Hakka Sanyi Township in Miaoli (
In 1973 the factory received an order from Dallas, in the US, for 30 wooden duck decoys. The ducks were to be carved and painted to look like common loons. Soon, orders for the ducks began to pour in from the US and Canada. However, the biggest business was yet to come. In the early 1980s cosmetics and collectibles company Avon caught on to the duck-decoy craze and ordered 80,000 green-winged teals, wood ducks, mallards and canvasbacks for sale as collectibles. Shuang Feng began to net about NT$60 million per year.
"It took us a full year just to produce the first models for the order," said Lee Mao (
The solid wooden figures had to resemble real ducks, but they also had to resemble real decoys -- the simple, rustic kind that antique-lovers were dying to get their hands on.
A Shuang Feng duck could easily be identified on Antiques Roadshow as a "cheap Taiwanese imitation" while a duck decoy carved by master craftsmen A. Elmer Crowell (1862-1951) or Gus Wilson (1864-1950) could sell for hundreds of thousands of US dollars at auction. However, looking at some examples on display in the Duck Treasure Shop it's easy to see how an interior designer with a rustic bent would have been happy to find such good, cheap imitations. The form is convincing, while the lack of intense detail and the relative dullness of color evoke the pragmatism of hunting. Nowadays the Avon ducks sell on ebay for US$10 to US$15.
Following the Avon orders, Shuang Feng began producing all sorts of wooden, duck-shaped items: telephone cases, match holders and more. The number of crafts-people working in the factory hovered around 80.
But, with the arrival of the year 2000, the orders started going to cheaper factories in Southeast Asia and China. With the high cost of labor and importing wood from North America, Shuang Feng could no longer compete and was moving towards bankruptcy.
"We were making less than NT$20,000 per month and going deeper and deeper into debt," said Lee.
But then Shuang Feng received some inspiration in March, 2003 from a Taichung group called Guan Shu Educational Foundation (觀樹教育基金會). The foundation helped turn Shuang Feng into the Duck Treasure Shop, where do-it-yourself ducks could be produced cheaply and sold for more than those made to fill oversea orders. Now, the three woodworkers at Duck Treasure Shop produce ducks much as they did before (only now in a wider variety of shapes and sizes) except they leave off the final touches. For NT$200 to NT$1,000 (depending on the item's size) customers can choose a duck, paint it, dry it, spray it with finish and then take it home to put on their porch, hearth or wherever.
"The best part is choosing the colors," said customer Ya-xun (雅薰), 18, who had just finished painting her duck in a pattern of pink, yellow and sea-foam green that resembled a can of Arizona iced tea. "Each duck has its own pattern, but I wanted to do something a little different from everyone else," she said.
The entire process of painting, drying and spraying takes approximately two hours. According to Lee, that's enough time to let kids and parents to work on one duck together, as the children will surely get distracted after 45 minutes and run out to play, leaving the parents to touch up their paint jobs. This way, she said, families can take home a finished product that everyone can be proud of.
And if you don't trust yourself to create a duck that resembles an actual living creature, there are plenty of pre-painted loons and mallards on sale in the shop. There's also a selection of indigenous Taiwanese fowl, such as the Mikado pheasant featured on the NT$1,000 bill, and a variety of wooden bears, frogs and birds designed by Taipei-based artist He Hua-ren (
Getting there: The shop is at 176, Chonghe Road, Sanyi Township, Miaoli County
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