Sunflower Boat Works Material Added to the Antique Boat Museum’s Archival Collections

The Antique Boat Museum (ABM) is pleased to announce the donation of four scrapbook albums related to the boatbuilder Sunflower Boat Works in 2024 by International Advisory Council member Dave Bortner. Prior to Dave’s donation, the Museum did not have any information on Sunflower Boat Works in the Marion Clayton Link Archives. The addition of these four albums expands the resources available to Museum staff and other researchers on the different boatbuilders of the United States. The Museum’s archival information on boatbuilders is by no means comprehensive as some boatbuilder files are extensive, some consist of only a page or two of information, and others don’t exist yet as in the case of Sunflower Boat Works.

Sunflower Boat Works scrap book donated to ABM by ACBS board member, Dave Bortner.

Sunflower Boat Works, located on Tomahawk Lake, Wisconsin, is a historic regional boatbuilder near and dear to donor Dave Bortner’s heart. The proprietor, Fabian Woodzicka, was an interesting and busy character, operating the Sunflower Resort, Sunflower Boat Works, and an antique automobile museum. Dave visited as a very young child with his father, whose interest in automobiles first led him there. Eventually, his parents bought a home on Tomahawk Lake around the point from Sunflower and as they became interested in boats and the local area, Dave had the opportunity to acquire a number of items including catalogs and the scrapbooks Fabian used to document his boatbuilding career.

In Dave’s words: “While carefully (ha!) conserving these items [the Sunflower Boat Works albums] for about forty years (in one of my file cabinet drawers), I have been watching with interest the developing scanning and conservation capabilities at ABM. Since ABM is the best home for the long term care and conservation of these items, I’ve now gifted them there permanently. The very best news is that the capable crew at ABM has scanned the entire collection, so the best possible outcome has been achieved: the originals are preserved, yet the digital versions are available to share with the world!”

The last three years have been marked by a concerted effort by ABM’s curatorial staff to increase digital access to the archival collections. While the primary focus has been on the grant-driven digitization projects such as the Matthews Boat Owners Association Collection currently being digitized, opportunities are taken when they arise to digitize the archival holdings and make them available to everyone via ABM’s online collections database: https://hub.catalogit.app/8933. Digitization allows ABM to more easily share archival material with researchers through research requests as well as making it possible for anyone to find historic documents and photos without needing to make special travel arrangements to see items in person. As the Marion Clayton Link Archives’ collections comprise tens of thousands of materials, progress in making the full archival collection accessible digitally is slow yet steady.

ABM is always open to adding to and growing the Marion Clayton Link Archives’ holdings as archival material helps tell the story of recreational boating through promotional material, photographs, blueprints, letters, and more. If you have any archival material related to recreational boating that you may be interested in donating or sharing with the Museum in some form, Museum staff would love to chat with you about it. Feel free to contact either Caitlin Playle, Curator/Collections Manager, at caitlinplayle@abm.org or 315.686.4104 ext. 231 or Shannon Buchal, Archivist, at sbuchal@abm.org or 315.686.4104 ext. 823.