home of distinction
53
Case in point, at the far corner of the home’s living wing
is Mort’s office.
“It’s a great place to have an office,” he says. Gesturing
toward the view of the creek, he explains, “This is tidal, so
later in the day it will be completely high; you won’t see
any of the oyster beds.”
Neblett’s office, his third consecutive duck room, is
tinted Mandarin red, trimmed in crisp white. His array of
relic working waterfowl and shore bird decoys includes a
handful of ornamentals.
“I like ducks and I like the out of doors,” says Mort, a
game hunter as well as an artifact hunter.
“We used to go to flea markets … before they were a
big deal,” Judy says. One local antique dealer, auctioneer
D.C. North, was instrumental in rounding out the decoy
Hand-carved shorebirds displayed on pecky cypress are the
prelude to a collection of waterfowl decoys, right. The living
wing blends a cozy den with an open kitchen with breakfast
nook overlooking Hewletts Creek.
collection. “Most of these are by known carvers,” Mort says.
The waterbird collection, some pieces more than 100 years old— one
cork bird decoy that was “shot over” by Teddy Roosevelt hunting
on Quogue, Long Island—represents well-known North Carolina
and Virginia decoy carvers, Ned Burgess and Alvira Wright to name
two, that North helped Neblett curate during a long fertile period of
collecting.
“I thought we would miss living on the waterway because you could
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