John W. Jones Signed Print Slave Gathering Cotton From Mississippi Obsolete $50 Banknote

ART, JOHN W. JONES SIGNED PRINT, “SLAVE GATHERING COTTON” FROM MISSISSIPPI OBSOLETE $50 BANKNOTE — Artist John W. Jones recreates Confederate currency’s scenes of slavery. Astonishing as it may seem today, it’s no wonder that Confederate banks printed currency that depicted slaves working in the cotton fields—the hottest commodities in the antebellum South were cotton—and African Americans. Jones, a Columbia, SC, native, has created a series of acrylic-on-canvas paintings derived from the shocking scenes featured on the currency. In the late 1990s, Jones was working in a blueprint shop and was amazed at what he discovered upon enlarging a customer’s Confederate banknote. That experience inspired the first of what would turn out to be 86 versions of legal tender notes that circulated throughout the Confederacy before and during the Civil War and in some cases, during the Reconstruction era. Coveted by collectors and numismatists, one or more of these beautiful pieces of art belongs in the home or workplace of any collector of 19th century Americana.