A few months ago John Lewellyn contacted me about an article I had reprinted in my book The History of the Fish Hook in America, Vol. I about Cornelius Lie, the Norwegian patent holder for one of the most valuable Victorian hooks. He had been searching for a Wisconsin connection to the lure, and this article I republished mentioned that he had assigned rights to -- you guessed it -- J.J. Eskil of Florence, Wisconsin. This would make them a Wisconsin lure, and one of the earliest at that!
But John's research has gone far beyond just Cornelius Lie. His new web site, The Lure Archive, is a really cool on-going effort to document the history of a whole bunch of obscure and small-maker lures from our fishing past.
John has put together an impressive list of lures he is starting to gather information on. Many of the lures don't have listings yet, and some that do have only patent drawing or patent information. However, he has been diligently working and with the help of a number of collectors is beginning to fill in the gaps.
The site is clean and attractive and is already a great resource. It promises to be a useful and interesting resource for collectors and historians, so if anyone has any info that might help John in this project, please feel free to contribute a piece or two. I know I've got some neat material I'll be passing along to John.
John can be reached at closetcollector AT yahoo DOT com.
-- Dr. Todd
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