Does anybody know who the banjo player featured on this old jug is?

[Richard William Ineson]

[Richard William Ineson]

[Joel Hooks]

 Looks like early minstrelsy title sheet art.  It might not be that old. 

We often see the banjo shaped guitar things in this early woodcut title sheet art, attributed to the ignorance of the artists about banjos of the time.  "Like a guitar but round"= what we see in these images.

[Richard William Ineson]

Of course i'm no expert but it looks like a fair representation of a banjo from around 1850 to me.

Joel Hooks said:

 Looks like early minstrelsy title sheet art.  It might not be that old. 

We often see the banjo shaped guitar things in this early woodcut title sheet art, attributed to the ignorance of the artists about banjos of the time.  "Like a guitar but round"= what we see in these images.

[Joel Hooks]

It has a Spanish guitar sound hole and the strings terminate at the bridge (like a Spanish Guitar).  

I've had mountain banjo experts try to convince me that this was an early representation of the Glenn/Hicks/Proffitt style mountain banjo.  It is not.

Richard William Ineson said:

Of course i'm no expert but it looks like a fair representation of a banjo from around 1850 to me.

Joel Hooks said:

 Looks like early minstrelsy title sheet art.  It might not be that old. 

We often see the banjo shaped guitar things in this early woodcut title sheet art, attributed to the ignorance of the artists about banjos of the time.  "Like a guitar but round"= what we see in these images.

[Richard William Ineson]

As far as I.m aware a lot of the depictions of minstrel troupes like the Ethiopian Seranders feature banjos with sound holes in the vellum, as we know, sound holes in vellums continued to be used over a long period (Wilkes in the UK, van Eps in the USA, for example) as to the strings terminating at the bridge, the engraver had probably never seen a banjo and just did his best to illustrate a  musical instrument with which he was not fully acquainted. I was really just interested in finding out who the banjo player depicted on the jug might be. John  Hodges aka 'Cool White' was associated with the song 'Buffalo Gals' and I conjectured that the engraving for the cover of the sheet music for this song might have been utilised by the manufacturer of the jug to decorate the jug. I have not seen the original cover for the song 'Buffalo Gals' but thought that someone on this site might have a copy so that we could compare the two illustrations.

Joel Hooks said:

It has a Spanish guitar sound hole and the strings terminate at the bridge (like a Spanish Guitar).  

I've had mountain banjo experts try to convince me that this was an early representation of the Glenn/Hicks/Proffitt style mountain banjo.  It is not.

Richard William Ineson said:

Of course i'm no expert but it looks like a fair representation of a banjo from around 1850 to me.

Joel Hooks said:

 Looks like early minstrelsy title sheet art.  It might not be that old. 

We often see the banjo shaped guitar things in this early woodcut title sheet art, attributed to the ignorance of the artists about banjos of the time.  "Like a guitar but round"= what we see in these images.