Meeting Wendell Gilley

I doubt that many of you have ever heard of Wendell Gilley. If you happened to live in Southwest Harbor, Maine, on Mount Desert Island, many years ago, and were in need of a plumber, you called Wendell Gilley.
Born in 1904, Gilley started out as a plumber in the 1920's. In his spare time, he started carving birds as a hobby. Starting in 1931, he entered into a business arrangement with Abercrombie and Fitch to supply carvings of small birds, which he sold for $5. His most famous, and probably largest work, was the eagle for the Wannamaker's Department Store in Philadelphia.
Eventually, Gilley's career as a plumber tapered off, and he turned to bird carving full-time. He had a shop just off of the main street in Southwest Harbor overlooking the harbor, and it was there that I met him in 1980.
My father had been a minister in Southwest Harbor and, when he moved with the family to Pennsylvania in the early 1960's, his farewell gift from the church was a carving by Wendell Gilley, which I own today.

The piece depicts a seagull landing on (or taking off from) a piece of driftwood. The gull is carved from wood and hand-painted, and the legs are made from lead (Gilley had collected old lead weights that had been used for balancing tires and melted them down to cast the legs, which were then painted). The piece sits in my office at home.

In 1980, it was before my father had given me the seagull carving, and I wanted to own a Wendell Gilley carving. I have made about thirty trips back to Mount Desert Island since moving away and, on this particular trip, I stopped by the Gilley workshop. He was sitting in the shop working on a carving, while there were probably a couple dozen other carvings in various stages of completion laying around. I introduced myself, and told him I was interested in buying one of his carvings. I also mentioned that I had lived in Southwest Harbor with my family years ago and that my father owned one of his carvings.

He asked about my family, and I told him about my father having been the minister at the Congregational Church on High Road. His comment, if you can imagine someone talking in a distinct Yankee accent, was "Ayuh. I knew your father. Never went to his church, but I knew your father." He then went on to tell me that he had several orders for pieces, and that the wait to get to mine would be about two years. Two years is a long time, and I wasn't sure I wanted to go down that road. I thanked him for the opportunity to meet him and for his time, and left.

In 1981, The Wendell Gilley Museum opened in Southwest Harbor. Wendell Gilley died in 1983 and, although his workshop was not preserved, the museum houses some of his works as well as works by other wildlife carvers.

I have been in contact with the museum and, as part of my estate planning, I am going to donate the seagull carving to the museum later this year, on my next trip back to MDI. Hopefully visitors to the museum will enjoy being able to see this piece, as well as many others created by Gilley and other talented artists.