Boucher Five-String Fretless Banjo
Boucher Five-String Fretless Banjo
- Description
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This banjo was made by William Boucher, Jr. in Baltimore, Maryland in 1846. It is a Five-String Fretless Banjo, with a wood shell, red painted metal hoop, 6 brackets, and friction pegs. Stamped on back of the neck:
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W.BOUCHER.JR
BALTIMORE -
William Boucher was a drum maker and musical instrument dealer in Baltimore, Maryland. He became the first commercial maker of banjos, perhaps through his association with the celebrated minstrel banjoist Joel Walker Sweeney.
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His instruments were important in standardizing the form of the banjo in its transition from a homemade rural instrument to urban commercial manufacture. The basic shape and string arrangement has changed little up to the present day. Boucher’s design copied important features of earlier home-made African American instruments: the skin head, short thumb string and fretless neck. He added a scrolled peghead similar to those used by guitar makers W. Stauffer and C. F. Martin, and replaced the traditional gourd body with a thin, bentwood rim construction with screw-tightening brackets similar to that used for drumheads. Boucher’s innovations were well-adapted to commercial mass-production and urban musical tastes and played a large part in the subsequent worldwide enthusiasm for the banjo.
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These commercial “improvements” were never adopted by many traditional rural musicians, who continued to make good sounding instruments that were entirely adequate for their musical needs from locally available materials, at little or no expense.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Object Name
- banjo
- date made
- 1846
- maker
- Boucher, Jr., William
- place made
- United States: Maryland, Baltimore
- Physical Description
- wood (overall material)
- metal (overall material)
- paint (overall material)
- animal skin (overall material)
- Measurements
- overall: 34 1/2 in x 11 in x 3 in; 87.63 cm x 27.94 cm x 7.62 cm
- ID Number
- MI.094765
- catalog number
- 94765
- accession number
- 22989
- Credit Line
- Gift of William Boucher, Jr.
- See more items in
- Culture and the Arts: Musical Instruments
- Music & Musical Instruments
- Banjos
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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