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Burl Birds

I have to put this somewhere so I'm putting it here. I bought a pair of wooden bird sculptures a few months back on shopgoodwill (the Goodwill auction site), and I saw them again today. They are made from burl wood, so they are technically OOAK, so I was surprised to see another one.

I then searched it using Google Lens and plain old googling "burl bird" and BOY are there a lot of them out there. Below is a non-exhaustive sampling of them. There are a few styles that appear over and over, but they all have their quirks, be it actual feet, carved eyes, googly-style painted eyes, funky poses, or plumage.

On provenance, many of them are described as "mid-century" by the sellers, but the ones that have actual dates on them are generally from the 90's (and one was listed as "MCM" with Mexico 1992 written on the bottom clearly in the picture lol). A few of them say they are from Mexico, but most have no location or artist information.

Another note: some of these are called "parasite wood" carvings as opposed to "burl wood".

#thrift #thrifting #burl #midcentury #folk art #90's #carving