The Art of Blade and Brush


An Interlude at Lem’s workshop – June 6th 1978
December 26, 2019

This account has been transcribed Dec. 22th, 2019 from my sketchbook journal of 1978. I came down from Pennsylvania in the pick-up and arrive around nine in the morning. Lem was feeling low; been sick a week. I found him...

The story around “Henry Overboard"
October 16, 2015

"Henry" is Henry Singer who lived nearby on a farm. I got to know him because he raised a wide variety of ducks, swan and geese, and other exotic birds on his farm along with cows, goats, sheep, mules and...

Reminiscences on Meeting the Ward Brothers
September 02, 2013

At the age of 13 my parents let me hunt by myself and that Christmas I got a 410 gauge bolt-action Mossberg shotgun. In Crisfield, Maryland, where I grew up, duck hunting was the big sport—beginning in the fall and...

Don Briddell’s Decorative Mallard Decoy Pair in the Smithsonian
April 22, 2012

In 1975, to celebrate the upcoming bicentennial of the United States Declaration of Independence, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. decided to hold an art show called “Craft Multiples.” The idea behind this show was to feature crafts that were...