Six months ago, I wrote about a giant circa 1900 baritone harp guitar by F. W. Walton (the one on the right). In that article, I theorized that Walton may have copied a then-recent creation of Chicago’s Joseph Bohmann – namely, his Contra Bass Harp Guitar (on the left).
Incredibly, at least four of these c.1895-1900 contra bass harp guitars survive, each slightly different, and all amazingly cool.
My August Harp Guitar of the Month shows all four, along with the background on these imposing, way-ahead-of-their-time instruments!
Thanks, Sean. Bruce has been obsessed with Bohmann for sometime now, and has a ton of information. We have more HG info if we can ever find time. Likely not a book, but hopefully he’ll create an exhaustive website like my own one day…
Fantastic blogg Gregg, I’ve been looking forward to this for months. I just love the work of Bohmann. You say that Bruce Hammond is the biographer of Bohmann, does that mean there could a book in the future? Or is harpguitars. net once again the only place that has so much info on one more lost American treasure?