Boucher Five-String Fretless Banjo
date: label: date made
content: 1847
name: label: maker
content: Boucher, Jr., William
notes: label: Description
content: <p>This banjo was made by William Boucher, Jr. in Baltimore, Maryland in 1847. It is a Five-String Fretless Banjo, with a wood shell, gold painted metal hoop, 14 brackets, and friction pegs. Stamped on back of the neck:</p>
label: Description
content: <p>W.BOUCHER.JR<br>BALTIMORE</p>
label: Description
content: <p>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.</p>
label: Description
content: <p>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.</p>
label: Description
content: <p>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.</p>
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
label: Location
content: Currently not on view (string fragments)
place: label: place made
content: United States: Maryland, Baltimore
setName: label: See more items in
content: Culture and the Arts: Musical Instruments
label: See more items in
content: Music & Musical Instruments
label: See more items in
content: Banjos
publisher: label: Related Publication
content: Densmore, Frances. Handbook of the Collection of Musical Instruments in the United States National Museum.
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of William Boucher, Jr.
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: MI.094766
label: catalog number
content: 94766
label: accession number
content: 22989
objectType: label: Object Name
content: banjo
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: wood (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: metal (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: paint (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: animal skin (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 38 1/2 in x 14 in x 3 1/4 in; 97.79 cm x 35.56 cm x 8.255 cm