Boucher Five-String Fretless Banjo

Object Details

Boucher, Jr., William

Description

This banjo was made by William Boucher, Jr. in Baltimore, Maryland in 1845. It is a Five-String Fretless Banjo, with a wood shell with a decorative strip, red painted metal hoops, 6 brackets, and friction pegs. The banjo is stamped:

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.

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.

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

Credit Line

Gift of William Boucher, Jr.

1845

ID Number

MI.094764

catalog number

094764

accession number

22989

Object Name

banjo

Physical Description

metal (overall material)

paint (overall material)

animal skin (overall material)

wood (overall material)

Measurements

overall: 37 1/2 in x 13 in x 3 1/2 in; 95.25 cm x 33.02 cm x 8.89 cm

place made

United States: Maryland, Baltimore

Related Publication

Densmore, Frances. Handbook of the Collection of Musical Instruments in the United States National Museum.

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Cultural and Community Life: Musical Instruments

Music & Musical Instruments

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Banjos

National Museum of American History

Record ID

nmah_605671

Metadata Usage (text)

CC0

GUID (Link to Original Record)

http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/ng49ca746a4-4d20-704b-e053-15f76fa0b4fa