Best Friends
Raymond Coins
American, 1904–1998

Details
Title
Best Friends
Artist/Maker
Raymond Coins (American, 1904–1998)
Date
ca. 1988
Medium
Steatite
Dimensions
17 7/8 x 13 3/4 x 3 inches
Credit
T. Marshall Hahn Collection
Accession #
1997.51
On View
Currently not on view
The subject of this relief is the New Farmer’s Warehouse in Mount Airy, North Carolina, where Coins worked as a floor manager during the tobacco auction season. The artist drew this scene from a photograph of himself and his friend Harvey Lench that appeared in the local newspaper in 1939. The picture showed the two men sitting in front of a massive pile of tobacco, with Lench on the left, holding a match to a rolled tobacco leaf, and Coins twisting a leaf in his hands. In this relief, the heap of tobacco is represented by the hexagonal shape between the figures, while a line of indecipherable writing—which may represent the jargon of the auctioneer’s call—curves above the scene.
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