CC0 · no rights reserved
Banjo Chair
From the collection of Smithsonian American Art Museum. Free to download, adapt and use — no permission needed.
About this work
An unknown artist probably made this piece for a minstrel show during the late nineteenth century. Minstrel shows were hugely popular, and the instruments, especially the banjo, often appeared as decorative furniture, clocks, and wall hangings. The artist created Banjo Chair by fixing brackets around the seat, carving the seat back to resemble a peghead, and inlaying thin strips of wood to represent the strings. (Lynda Hartigan, Made with Passion, 1990)
Smithsonian American Art Museum’s own descriptionSubjects
Credit lineBanjo Chair. ca. 1875. Unidentified. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Herbert Waide Hemphill, Jr. and museum purchase made possible by Ralph Cross Johnson. CC0.
