For enthusiasts of early banjo

Mystery Banjo (?)

What is it?

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Comment by Noah Cline on February 6, 2014 at 6:29pm: Looks like a guitar-banjo to me. Almost looks like the top's wooden, and there also appears to be a sound hole in the top as well. In the peg head, there looks like three tuners on one side (going by the spindles).

My two cents, I guess. ;)

Comment by Leonidas (Lee) Jones on February 6, 2014 at 6:49pm: Noah, I think you've hit it.

Comment by Joel Hooks on February 6, 2014 at 8:52pm: Or a lute, complete with sound hole-- consistent with her costume.

Comment by Ian Bell on February 7, 2014 at 9:11am: Not exactly the same but - similar. A friend of mine in Toronto actually has one like the one in the drawing. It's quite a sweet little thing.

Comment by Bob Sayers on March 8, 2014 at 9:23pm: Looking through some of my stuff yesterday, I came across a French engraving depicting an American minstrel troupe. Darned if the guy in the middle doesn't look like he's playing an instrument like the one the lady's holding. Reason still suggests that she's holding a lute or a theatrical prop. But this looks awfully close.

Comment by Bob Sayers on March 8, 2014 at 10:54pm: The "banjo" in the French engraving is actually quite interesting. It looks like it's just a gourd with a round hole cut in the top (no skin head) and the neck inserted through the side. Sort of like a primitive guitar.

Comment by Bob Sayers on March 8, 2014 at 11:40pm: I've been looking some more at the French illustration (which, by the way, was published in 1859 although I don't yet know the source). The artist must have sketched the scene from life, as he shows three very different banjos in the top panel.

Of the "banjo" in the central panel, I said before that I thought the neck was poking through the side of a gourd. I'm not so sure now, as it looks as though the fingerboard extends over the body in one of the banjos in the top panel. That may be the case here as well.

Comment by Mark Weems on March 9, 2014 at 12:14am: Nice find, Bob. I have looked through much of the available pictorial representations of banjo's between 1840 and 1848 and have seen many such instruments. In thinking about the early banjo I always try to keep in mind the development of the guitar. Developing out of other instruments such as lutes and vihuela's in the 16th century, and going through many changes in physical form and in numbers of string courses, it finally settled on its 6 single string form by the early 1800's (the earliest extant 6 single string guitar dates from the 1790's). To think that the banjo would not have gone through a similar history before the popularity of Sweeny's 5 string with thumb string becomes the standard, seems hard to believe, especially considering the structural diversity of possible African lute prototypes. I have been mocked on this forum, however, for suggesting that there could have been other forms of banjo's during the 1830's and 40's, even though the research of Dena Epstein, Hans Nathan, and the pictorial record point toward the existence of multiple forms of early banjo types.

Comment by Al Smitley on March 9, 2014 at 5:21am: The Detroit Historical Museum has/had one of the instruments in the drawing Ian sent.

It is/was displayed in the window of the "music store" downstairs in their "Streets of Detroit".

Comment by Wes Merchant on March 9, 2014 at 8:38am: http://collections.si.edu/search/results.htm?q=record_ID%3Anmah_606...

I keep thinking about this one as well.

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