Robert Shaw, the author of Bird Decoys of North America: Nature, History, and Art, is a widely recognized expert on decoys, quilts, and other American folk art and traditional hand crafts and the author of such other critically acclaimed books as America's Traditional Crafts, Call to the Sky: The Decoy Collection of James M. McCleery, M.D., and American Quilts: The Democratic Art, 1780-2007.

Bob was curator at the Shelburne (VT) Museum from 1981-1994, where he worked with that institution's world renowned collections of bird decoys and American folk art. He has curated exhibitions at many major American museums, including the National Gallery of Art, the Houston Museum of Natural Science, and the Dallas Museum of Natural History, and lectured at the American Folk Art Museum, the American Craft Museum, Sotheby's, and dozens of other institutions and collectors' gatherings.

Bob also has contributed to numerous books and exhibition catalogs about decoys; written articles for The Magazine Antiques, Early American Life, Sports Afield, and Decoy Magazine; and served as a consultant to museums, private collectors, and Sotheby's. He contributed the introduction and a chapter on collecting to The Great Book of Wildfowl Decoys and has keynoted two symposia on decoys organized by Sotheby's.