A Writer’s Shed in the Springs

Glyn Vincent made the thick white bookshelves on the right from boards he found on the beach. The cast-iron daybed is from Charles P. Rogers. The wood-burning stove was there when he moved in. Photo: Wendy Goodman

My brother-in-law, the writer, sailor and fisherman Glyn Vincent, and my sister, a specialist in pre-Columbian art, Stacy Goodman, spent years driving past a modest shingled house with a red wooden airplane on the lawn with three smaller outbuildings in the Springs neighborhood of East Hampton.

In 2008, they bought the place from Ben Tyler, who made duck decoys, archery bows, and any number of other things in his carpentry workshop at the back of the property. “When he moved to a retirement home, he left behind many of his creations,” Glyn says, “among them a belt-driven table saw and an expertly wrought wood toolbox with his saw and chisels still inside.”

A few years before they bought Tyler’s property, Glyn had published his first book, The Unknown Night: The Genius and Madness of R.A. Blakelock, an American Painter. Soon after they had settled in, Glyn decided to fix the shed up to become his year-round writing studio, replacing roof tiles that were leaking and cutting out a window above Tyler’s worktable, which he would use as his writing desk.

“I wanted to leave the space as close as possible to what it was when we bought it,” Glyn says. The building still has Tyler’s spirit with his original floor, wood-burning stove, and handmade chest of drawers, where Glyn stores his fly-tying materials. “The small, unassuming property reminded us of a simpler place where fishing, gardening, creating art, and getting by went hand in hand,” Glyn says of the area where Jackson Pollock, Costantino Nivola and many other artists also lived.

The screen door of the entrance with a wood sculpture of a sea bird. The painting on the left is by Richard Leto, and the one on the right is by Glyn’s sister, Caroline V. Gerry. Photo: Wendy Goodman

A detail of the bookshelf with white clay sculptures by Glyn’s mother, the late Betsy von Furstenberg, and a silver gelatin print of a tiger at the Bronx Zoo taken by Sharlene Spingler in the 1980s. Photo: Wendy Goodman

Glyn kept Tyler’s wood tool chest with his saws as it was. Photo: Wendy Goodman

Glyn’s fly-fishing and spinning rods are stored on the rafter ties. He writes about the local environment and marine history, contributing to the East Hampton Star’s East Magazine. He is also an advocate for land conservation and water-quality issues through local environmental organizations. Photo: Wendy Goodman

A corner of Tyler’s old worktable, now Glyn’s writing desk and fly-tying area, where he uses a fly-tying vise, bobbin, whip finisher, and various fly-tying yarns and feathers. Photo: Wendy Goodman

Tyler made the cabinet, now used by Glyn, for storing his tools and accessories. The labels are handwritten. Wendy Goodman.

Tyler made the cabinet, now used by Glyn, for storing his tools and accessories. The labels are handwritten. Wendy Goodman.

Glyn kept Tyler’s worktable as his writing desk, where he is working on his next book, At Sea, a memoir about his storm-ridden crossing of the Atlantic last spring in a sailboat with a friend and a two-man crew “We left from St. Martin in the Caribbean and sailed over 2,500 miles to Portugal’s Azores islands.” Little did he know then what he was in for. Photo: Wendy Goodman