House of Folk Art

This episode starts with Mike returning to the table, where Matt has pulled together a group of rare folk art, pottery, baskets, quilts, and objects from the gallery before they ship out to new collections. Some of these pieces may not come back around for decades, so Matt wanted to get them on camera while they were still in the room. The conversation begins with Mike’s 35 years in the folk art w...

Matt and Sully are back at Ledbetter Auction Gallery in Gibsonville with a fresh stack from a 400-piece single-owner folk art collection that just came through the door. The collection had already been unboxed and was waiting to be photographed, but Matt had not fully gone through it yet. So instead of picking their own favorites from around the gallery, Matt and Sully grab a random stack of about...

Matt and Kyle are back at the Auction Gallery in Gibsonville after a run of antique shows. Liberty and Fishersville were fun, but this episode gets back to the roots of House of Folk Art: self-taught art, pottery, carvings, and the stories behind the pieces. Matt and Kyle pull work from around the gallery and talk through what makes each piece worth slowing down for. The episode starts with Sam Ez...

Fishersville was a great show this year. Friday was packed from the start, dealers were moving material early, and by Saturday morning Matt was already back at the van digging through the pile of things that he’s taking back home. Matt pulls out a few of the buys from Fishersville and talks through them while the show is still happening around him: carved walking sticks, tramp art, Clyde Herman ca...

Matt returns to the auction gallery after Liberty with the buys still sitting behind him and another show already on the calendar. This time, the conversation picks up in that brief window between antique shows, when the dust from one trip has barely settled and the next one is already starting to take shape. Liberty had the feeling of a final chapter, but not necessarily a dead end. After months...

Matt Ledbetter sits down before heading out to Liberty, North Carolina to set up Wade's tent for the last Liberty Antique show. Held twice a year in Randolph County, the Liberty Antiques Festival has long been one of the best known antique shows in the region. Dealers from more than 25 states set up across a large farm setting, with everything from pottery, furniture, and quilts to decoys, folk ar...

Matt Ledbetter and Kyle sit down with a table full of pieces from the Catawba Valley Pottery Festival and break down what they picked up over the weekend. Held once a year in Hickory, North Carolina, the Catawba Valley Pottery Festival brings together over a hundred working potters alongside a small group of dealers specializing in historic Catawba Valley pottery. It is one of the few places where...

In this episode of House of Folk Art, Matt Ledbetter and Kyle walk through the newly expanded Ledbetter warehouse and put it to use right away. With over 15,000 square feet of material to dig through, they each pick out five pieces and bring them back to the table to break down what they are seeing, what stands out, and why certain objects hold more weight than others. The episode starts inside th...

In this episode of House of Folk Art, Matt Ledbetter sits down with longtime friend and antique dealer Laura Saville for a full conversation on antique American quilts, how to look at them, how to date them, and why more collectors are starting to take them seriously as both historical objects and pieces of art. Laura talks about falling headfirst into quilts over the last several months, studying...

In January of 1994, Mary Proctor lost her grandmother, her uncle, and her aunt in a mobile home fire. The grandmother who raised her, the woman she called mama, was gone. The grief was overwhelming. For thirty days, Mary spent half of every day praying, sitting with her Bible, questioning God and asking why. On the final day, she says a light brighter than the sun appeared, and a voice spoke from...

Before museums and collectors caught on, Tom Wells was documenting Southern folk artists on VHS in the early 1990s. In this episode, Matt Ledbetter sits down with the longtime dealer to revisit those tapes and reflect on discovering artists like Z.B. Armstrong and J.T. McCord. Tom explains how he first met these artists, how relationships developed, how work was sold, and what it looked like to bu...

Matt Ledbetter talks with Julian-Sherrod Summers, also known as Red Sanford, about how their shared background in football quietly ran alongside a growing interest in old objects, self-taught artists, and the stories those pieces carry. From there, the conversation opens up into picking, collecting, valuing art, and the long road that led both of them into the folk art world. The conversation move...

In this episode, Wade Ledbetter sits down with Matt to talk through what real picking looked like before the internet changed the landscape. Long before Marketplace listings and phone searches, picking meant driving back roads, knocking on doors, carrying cash, and trusting instinct. Wade tells the story of calling a jug before it ever came out of the house, walking into basements unannounced, and...

In this episode of House of Folk Art, Matt Ledbetter sits down with longtime friend and full-time antique dealer Laura Saville for a wide-ranging, honest conversation about what it really means to make a living in antiques. Laura has spends all her time buying, selling, filling booths, working shows, and constantly moving inventory. Inspired by early memories of her grandfather’s Milwaukee saloon...

Mike Smith joins Matt in the gallery with several pieces of folk art pottery headed for the next auction, opening boxes and walking through each form as it comes out. What starts as a straightforward unboxing quickly turns into a deeper conversation about where these pieces came from, who made them, and how easily important work can be overlooked when context is lost. Throughout the episode, Matt...

Matt has been raised on canes since he was ten years old, and now he is passing the tradition down by raising his own kids on folk art canes too. From snake wrapped handles to fully carved masterpieces, he walks through some of the best walking sticks in the collection and ends by seeing if Kai can spot the most valuable cane in the room. Throughout the episode he breaks down the difference betwee...

Matt sits down with his dad, the infamous Wade Ledbetter, inside the auction gallery for a story Wade admits might be risky to even share. What starts as a quiet memory from rural Alamance County quickly turns into a mystery about a ten foot clock, a fifty thousand dollar offer from Henry Ford’s museum team, and a farmhouse fire that erased everything. Wade takes Matt back to the days when he deli...

Matt and Kyle sit down after two full days of picking at the Liberty Antiques Festival in Liberty, North Carolina. Surrounded by their finds, they go through the haul piece by piece, from rare signed North Carolina pottery and 19th-century paintings to a pristine Benny Carter saw. The conversation dives into the stories behind the buys, the lessons learned from years on the road, and the excitemen...

Matt and Sully sit down inside the Griffith Fine Art Museum at Red Oak Brewery to explore where fine art and folk art meet. Surrounded by a collection of American Impressionist paintings from the late 1800s, they talk about the crossover between high-end galleries and the handmade traditions that define Southern craftsmanship. What starts as a laid-back conversation over a Hummingbird Golden Lager...

Matt and Mike Smith sit down inside the Griffith Fine Art Museum at Red Oak Brewery to talk about the wild early days of Southern folk art and the collectors who helped define it. What begins as a casual visit quickly turns into a deep dive into Mike’s decades-long journey from salesman to documentarian, capturing the rise of self-taught art across the Southeast. Mike shares how he met artists lik...

Matt and Kyle take a deep dive into Kentucky folk artist Carl McKenzie (1905-1998), examining his colorful cut-wood sculptures that inspired a generation of collectors. From the Daniel Boone Trading Post to Larry Hackley's legendary collection, they explore how McKenzie's simple two-by-four constructions with movable arms captured the essence of Kentucky mountain life. The episode takes a personal...

Matt sits down with his father Wade Ledbetter, the legendary picker whose exploits have become House of Folk Art folklore. From walking to school with a .22 rifle to sleeping with shotguns in dangerous hotel rooms, Wade shares raw stories from the golden age of picking when there was no internet, no cell phones, and pickers ruled the auction house circuit. The conversation covers Wade's transition...

Matt and Sully kick off with some international flair as Sully shares his folk art discoveries from Poland and Denmark – including a mysterious pottery piece that might be 200 years old and a painting on board he snagged for five bucks in Copenhagen.  The conversation flows from European finds to the economics of American pottery, exploring how glass factories nearly killed traditional potters unt...

Matt opens his doors to the official House of Folk Art gallery – a sanctioned room in his Gibson­ville home where guests drink wine, discuss eyeball jugs, and sleep surrounded by Benny Carter cityscapes. What started as empty walls has become a rotating exhibition that changes every two years, filled with the kind of obtainable art that proves you don't need millionaire money to live with authenti...

Matt opens the show in Dale Earnhardt Sr.’s iconic black-and-red jersey while Sully sports Dale Jr. The playful NASCAR nod lasts only long enough for a quick laugh before they park the racing talk and steer straight into folk-art territory. Their first stop is Eden, North Carolina, where Carrie Graves covered scrap paper with bright marker sketches for decades and her daughter Ellen Martin coaxed...