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News and articles
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Check out our Redbubble shop
vintagebanjo.redbubble.com We've got banjo-themed t-shirts and sweatshirts, stickers and magnets, notebooks, cushions, phone cases, water...
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Swaim’s the name
We get all sorts of feedback from people, mostly friendly and Michael Wright, rightly wanted to put right the middle S in S S Stewart....
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VBM Revamped
Apologies for being away and thanks to our resident designer Ginny for putting the site back together. Our website host was taken over,...
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Fact or history?
In this day and age research into most subjects can start with the internet, but sometimes what is posted is simply perpetuating a myth. ...
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Tremont Street, Boston, Massachusetts
During the last decade of the 19th century there were 5 well respected manufacturers of Banjos, doing business between # 161 and #187...
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J W Sweeny, the 1st or perhaps the 3rd?
1842 .. John Tyler was US President, slavery was not going to be abolished in the USA for another 23 years . 7 years earlier was the...
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1215 was a good year too
Well built in Philadelphia (note the rosewood pot) around 1886 this 130 year old Samuel Stewart Piccolo travelled the world and ended up...
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1898 was a good year
... except Samuel S Stewart was not a well man. He had led the progress of the 5 string banjo to its peak, both as a piece of...
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Does the peg head profile really tell you the maker?
1873 two Johns, Dallas & Brewster, were making banjos in Oxford Street, London but after a few years they split and Dallas went out on...
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