"THE MINSTREL ERA "

The Minstrel Era is hybrid instrument, wedding a neck similar to those found on the earliest wooden rimmed banjos to a gourd body, similar to those on the earlier, pre-commercial banjos. There is a similar instrument in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. However, when I examined in 1991, I found that it was simply the neck of a conventional, wooden rimmed banjo, made by William Boucher in the 1840's, which had later been crudely joined to a replacement gourd body. Never the less, this combination of elements gives me some interesting forms to work with.

This banjo has a birdseye maple neck and a french polished, shellac finish. The tuning pegs are boxwood and there are six violin style "F" sound holes in the gourd, sort of referencing the six tensioning brackets of an early Boucher banjo.

In the future I'd like to make similar banjos with a darker figured cherry wood, also french polished, as well as some with a patinaed cherry neck and a flatter finish.