GIBSONVILLE, N.C. — On October 8, Ledbetter Auction hosted its Quarterly Folk Art Event and offered more than 600 lots of primitive, naïve and outsider art. The sale was led by a large carved head with carefully detailed hair, eyes and teeth that sold for $23,125, over five times its $2/4,000 estimate. An early work by Shields Landon Jones (1901-1997), the carving’s forehead was stamped “SL Jones” and dated 1985 on the bottom. Jones was a self-taught artist from West Virginia who began whittling animals from wood when he was a young boy, then returned to carving after retiring as a laborer and carpenter for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad. In 1972, his work was discovered by collector and cofounder of the American Folk Art Museum, Herb Waide Hemphill Jr, who first met Jones at a local country fair. Jones’s carvings are now in prominent museum collections throughout the United States. Price quoted with buyer’s premium as reported by the auction house. More on this sale to follow in a future issue.