Bill Quinn worked for years as the maintenance supervisor for Patterson Parchment Paper Company and became a pattern maker like his father (Gosner 94). He built his boats and carved his hunting decoys by hand. His first decoys are not completely his own, however. Often referred to as English-Quinns, these decoys are comprised of heads carved by Dan English and bodies carved by Quinn. It seems that Quinn rowed over to English’s, picked up a couple baskets of heads, and returned home to carve matching bodies which he and Joe King then painted.
When Quinn decided his rig was too small, he created decoys all his own to augment the others. Quinn decoys are bigger with “Quinn, Yardley, Pa.” painted on the bottom (Huster 100). Extended primaries with a V-shape between them and tails accented with grooves and notches mark the difference between the decoys Quinn carved himself and those he contributed to. He concentrated on black ducks, but also produced gadwalls, mallards, pintails, redheads, scaup, wigeon, one hollow owl and a rig of six crows. In all, Bill Quinn made no more than two hundred decoys, but each one bears the characteristics of his fine workmanship.