Raymond Coins was born in 1904 in Stuart, Virginia. He is well known for his large wooden figures and small "doll babies." Coins was born on a small farm in southern Virginia, the descendent of a long line of poor white subsistence mountain farmers. When he was ten years old, his father bought a farm in Winston-Salem area and moved the family there. He did farm work for others until 1950, when he and his wife, Ruby, were able to purchase their own small farm and the frame house where they live today. Coins grew tobacco, corn, oats, wheat, and rye in summer and held a second job during the winter as a "floor man" at tobacco warehouses in the Winston-Salem area. After Coins retired, he began to feel restless. He picked up a stone, started carving, and thus began his second career. He imitated Indian arrowheads and tomahawks at first, but before long he was working on his "doll babies" and bringing forth the animals and people that only he could see in his raw materials of local wood and stone. He also carves stone bas-reliefs of religious themes, crucifixions, and Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. In addition, he has made a number of animal figures in both wood and stone. He uses white, speckled and blue rock, as well as cedar wood for his carvings and carves with chisels and knives.