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Boucher Five-String Fretless Banjo

National Museum of American History
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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.

Credit Line
Gift of William Boucher, Jr.
1845
ID Number
MI.094764
catalog number
94764
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.
See more items in
Culture and the Arts: Musical Instruments
Popular Entertainment
Music & Musical Instruments
Banjos
Exhibition
Entertainment Nation
Exhibition Location
National Museum of American History
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

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5 String Fretless Banjo
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