The Goose Decoys of Charles Augustus Safford

When craftsman Charles Augustus Safford of Newburyport carefully measured, cut, and mortised pieces of wood into a life-sized Canada goose decoy around 1920, he no doubt expected the bird to weather many New England hunting seasons. It’s highly unlikely he imagined it would surpass the century mark and top half a million dollars on the auction floor.

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The Goose Decoys of Charles Augustus Safford

...by Guest Contributor Richard K. Lodge

When craftsman Charles Augustus Safford of Newburyport carefully measured, cut, and mortised pieces of wood into a life-sized Canada goose decoy around 1920, he no doubt expected the bird to weather many New England hunting seasons. It’s highly unlikely he imagined it would surpass the century mark and top half a million dollars on the auction floor.

In July 2023, a Safford sleeping goose decoy set a world record sale price of $594,000 for the maker at the Copley Fine Arts auction in Hingham. Just six years earlier the same decoy – a complex creation of some 20 pieces of cross-laminated wood – sold for what was then a record $517,500 at Guyette & Deeter’s auction in Portsmouth, N.H.

RECORD-SETTER – The sleeping Canada goose carved by Charles A. Safford sold for $594,000 at the Copley Fine Arts auction in July 2023. (Photo courtesy of Copley Fine Arts)

This goose by Safford helped propel the once-obscure carver into the national spotlight. Although this sleeper was a rare bird in the decoy collecting world, a small flock of Safford’s carved birds resides on display at the Museum of Old Newbury. Safford lived his early years in Newburyport. After he retired in the mid-1940s and moved to Lynn he continued carving numerous miniature ducks and geese, some of which are in MOON’s collection.

MUSEUM MINIATURES – Miniature waterfowl of many sizes and species are in the collection of the Museum of Old Newbury in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Charles Safford carved these birds as well as the miniature cattails in the background. (Photo courtesy of the Museum of Old Newbury)

For investors and decoy collectors, it’s the sleeping goose that marks the pinnacle of Safford’s wood carving work.

In a 2009 Decoy Magazine profile, Gwladys “Gigi” Hopkins, a curator, carver and author of Massachusetts Masterpieces, Decoy as Art, proclaimed that Safford’s sleeping goose decoy “leaps into the pantheon of the greatest American goose decoys ever made, sculpture and function in perfect marriage.” 

REAR VIEW – An alternate view of Safford's record-setting goose decoy (Photo courtesy of Copley Fine Arts)

Born in Gloucester, Safford spent most of his adult years in and around Newburyport. A multi-talented artist and craftsman, he hammered out items in tin, brass, copper and silver. As a cabinetmaker at his great-grandfather’s shop in Newburyport, he built everything from coffins to workboats. 

He built himself a cottage on Plum Island and from there he engaged in his greatest love, hunting ducks and geese. 

ISLAND COTTAGE – The cottage and hunting camp Charles Safford built on what eventually became the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge on Plum Island. (Photo courtesy of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service)

As a market hunter, Safford shot waterfowl for local restaurants and sent them by rail to eateries in Boston.

GOOD HUNTING – A young Charles Safford is loaded down with the fruits of his hunting on Plum Island, Massachusetts, in the early 1900s. (Photo courtesy of Candace Erickson)

Like other gunners in his day, he often hunted from a long wooden “sneak float” boat – similar to a kayak with a squared-off stern – which was camouflaged along the sides and bow with tufts of grass and salt marsh hay. He carved decoys in various poses (like his “sleeping” goose) and placed them in small groupings or “rigs,” anchored by metal weights. The floating decoys gave live birds flying overhead a false sense of safety, which often brought them within range of Safford’s shotgun. He made his decoys to last and left them outside season after season, which is evident in their faded and worn paint.

STEALTH VESSEL – Charles Safford in his sneak float, or duck boat, in a photo taken around 1930. (Photo courtesy of Duncan MacBurnie)

When Safford was in his mid 50s, he made a remarkable career change – and laid down his shotgun. In 1934 the Federation of the Bird Clubs of New England received a donation from Annie Hamilton Brown, a lifelong Massachusetts Audubon member, for the purchase of 1500 acres on Plum Island for a bird sanctuary. Safford, who was living year-round in his cottage on the island, went to work as the resident game warden for the sanctuary, and as warden, he had to keep his former hunting colleagues in line to protect the birds on and around the island. (He himself didn’t give up hunting entirely, but steadfastly honored the preserve and its boundaries.)

Safford patrolled the dunes, salt marshes and scattered woodlands on the undeveloped southern half of the island (the northern half was dotted with summer cottages and hunting shacks), usually on horseback. On his daily rounds he also kept a running list of bird sightings, filing regular reports for the monthly Bulletin of the Massachusetts Audubon Society. As a lover of the outdoors, he had always paid close attention to animals and birds. 

ON PATROL – Charles Safford scans the landscape while patrolling Plum Island on horseback. (Photo courtesy of Candace Erickson)

His work as a warden sometimes made the pages of the Newburyport Daily Herald. On November 18, 1941, the newspaper reported Safford “apprehended two hunters on Plum Island and charged them with having ‘unplugged shotguns.’ Removal of the plugs of the guns allows the harboring of more than the three shells permitted by law,” which meant the hunters could bag more birds from each passing flock. Each man was fined $30 in district court.

Another article ran in the Daily Herald on May 26, 1942, just months after the attack on Pearl Harbor drew the U.S. into World War II. The newspaper reported that Safford was still welcoming bird watchers to the island, “although the Coast Guard and Army have issued orders that no person shall carry a gun or camera in the locality as long as the present war condition exists.”

Later that year, the acreage then known as the Annie H. Brown Wildlife Sanctuary was incorporated into the 4600-acre Parker River National Wildlife Refuge, and Safford was out of a job at the age of 65. At that point he retired and moved to Lynn, where he spent his last 15 years. In those years he carved miniature waterfowl, including those in the museum’s collection and others owned by a handful of great-nieces and nephews.

TRIO OF GEESE – Three of the delicately painted miniature geese by Charles Safford from the Museum of Old Newbury. (Photo by Richard K. Lodge)

IN THE FAMILY – Two miniature geese inherited by Candace Erickson, a great-niece of Charles Safford. (Photo by Richard K. Lodge)

Safford died at age 80 in 1957 and is buried in Newburyport’s Oak Hill Cemetery near his parents and sisters.

GRAVESITE – The grave of Charles Safford and his sister Hazel Safford Towle Nock in Oak Hill Cemetery, Newburyport. (Photo courtesy of Ghlee Woodworth)

Geoff Walker, a contemporary decoy carver in Newbury, whose late father Hank set a high standard for carving, theorized Safford’s fame was late in coming because he didn’t carve many decoys. 

“As I know it, he didn’t build a lot of birds,” Walker said. “He might have built them for his friends and for his own rig,” but didn’t turn out hundreds of decoys like more well-known carvers whose work shows up frequently in auctions today.

Casey Smolar, an antique dealer on the North Shore of Massachusetts who has discovered many decoys in his travels, believes Safford only carved geese because that’s what he hunted. 

“He made a couple rigs of geese, probably one for himself and some for friends. He just didn’t make a lot of decoys,” Smolar said. “To my knowledge, I don’t know if he ever made other species other than geese.”

The 1999 catalog of an exhibition of decoys by local carvers at what was then called the Cushing Housing Museum (now Museum of Old Newbury) included a listing for Safford decoys as well as decoys carved by Frederick W. Baumgartner (1879-1959). Baumgartner was friends with Safford and he is credited with the original pattern for Baumgartner’s goose decoy. Like Safford, Baumgartner hunted waterfowl and owned a camp on the Newbury marsh that is now part of the Parker River Wildlife Refuge.

When Safford’s now-famous sleeping goose decoy went to auction in 2017, the Guyette & Deeter catalog devoted four pages to color photos and details about his life and the carving. That “splendid goose, the pinnacle of Safford’s work as a decoy maker, speaks volumes about his lifelong passion for wild birds and the prodigious talents he brought to portraying them,” the catalog opined.

Although the sleeping goose holds the record high price for one of Safford’s birds, it’s not the only one that put him on the map. In 1998, Bay State artist Bob Piscatori won the Massachusetts Waterfowl Stamp competition with a painting of a Charles Safford straight-headed goose.

STAMP OF APPROVAL – The Massachusetts Waterfowl Stamp featured a Stafford decoy in 1998. (Painting by Bob Piscatori)

In 2022, a sleeping Canada goose carved from a single piece of wood by Safford sold for $96,000 (with a presale estimate of $100,000-200,000) at a Copley Fine Art auction. Although it wasn’t as intricately pieced together as Safford’s six-figure record-setter, this goose has a more detailed paint job than others found in the same rig on Plum Island.

In the Copley auction catalog, Robert Shaw, a curator and author, said the sleeping goose was elaborately detailed with “prominent wing and feather paint pattern … unique among Stafford’s full-bodied geese.”

SECOND SLEEPING GOOSE – An intricately painted sleeping goose by Safford brought $96,000 at auction in 2022. (Photo courtesy of Copley Fine Arts)

According to Shaw, "Safford rigorously planned every inch of his birds, using precisely measured patterns he sketched around on each side of their bodies before he started carving. The whole decoy is a symphony of interacting lines and fluid curves that keep the viewer’s eye in constant motion.”

So how do you identify a full-size Stafford decoy? Smolar says some of Safford’s birds have “C.A. Safford” branded on the bottom, but even if they are unmarked, his style is unique. “They’re easy to identify,” he said. “Nobody else made a goose like him.”

Richard K. Lodge is a freelance writer and former editor of The Daily News of Newburyport

Something Is Always Cooking...

Roasted Veggie Bowl by Sierra Gitlin

While it’s really only a recipe in the loosest of terms, I’ve been loving a big bowl of roasted veggies over rice pilaf or couscous lately. It’s basically just a warm salad…simple, hearty, and healthy with endless variations depending on what you like and/or what’s in season. Here’s what I’ve been making:

Ingredients:

One bunch asparagus

One pound brussels sprouts, halved

One large handful baby spinach

One handful cherry tomatoes, halved

½ C feta cheese

1 box rice pilaf or couscous

Good quality olive oil

Salt

Pepper

• Heat oven to 425 degrees.
• Prepare the grain of your choice according to the instructions.
• While that’s cooking, coat asparagus and brussels sprouts in olive oil, salt, and pepper
• Roast at 425 degrees to desired doneness, usually about 15-20 mins minutes. (If you like your sprouts extra tender, soak them in a bowl of water for 10-15 minutes before roasting.)
• Once done, cut asparagus into bite sized pieces, and add along with brussels sprouts to your grains.
• Throw in a handful or two of raw baby spinach – the heat of the grains and roasted veggies will wilt it to perfection.
• Add cherry tomatoes. I like them raw, but they’re delicious roasted as well.
• Add feta cheese and toss well.
• Finish with a good drizzle of your best olive oil.

This warm salad works great with raw avocado and cucumber, roasted sweet potatoes, onions, beets, broccoli, carrots, peppers, whatever you've got! And it’s easy to roast some well-seasoned chicken breasts at the same time as the veggies if you want some extra protein. 

Puzzle Me This...

Click the image to do the puzzle



This collection of Charles Safford's miniature geese, photographed here by Richard K. Lodge, are on display at the Museum of Old Newbury.