Need an ID on Neapolitan style bowback

[italianprog]

Hello everyone,
I am new to the forum and need help to ID this mandolin for a school project.
It was found in Illinois and donated to the museum I work at.
I am thinking maybe early 1900s - the style is similar to May Flower mandolins produced in Chicago around that time - however there is no identifying information inside the body. Any help is greatly appreciated!!

[MikeEdgerton]

The tuners put it after 1900. Chicago was a major manufacturing area for musical instruments with Lyon and Healy, Harmony, Kay (originally Stromberg-Voisenet). and the second Regal Company with the original being in Indianapolis. There were other builders such as Bohmann and the Larson Brothers as well. This is a mandolin that was built "For the trade" with no brand name. That way a music school or teacher or a retailer could sell it as their own brand. They might have labeled or they might not. All of the major Chicago builders built for the trade. The butterfly was a common inlay. The headstock shape was common to a few builders. The inlay around the sound hole and the body are also common items sold by jobbers to multiple builders. A guess would be that it was built by Lyon and Healy as they were the largest builder but it could have been built by a slew of other builders that were not in Chicago. Either way, and identification is going to be a guess.

[italianprog]

Wow, thanks a lot for the detailed information! Would tuners of this era be Bakelite or some other material?

[NickR]

Your photos have not captured the whole instrument. The tuner buttons will be celluloid. They may predate Bakelite which was devised in 1907. Here is a very similar instrument identified as made by Regal in Indianapolis- rather than later in Chicago:

https://jakewildwood.blogspot.com/20...-mandolin.html

[italianprog]

Wow, thanks that looks just like it! Unfortunately I could not hold the instrument and take a picture at the same time, so the back of the headstock, machine heads and bowl are not pictured.

[NickR]

I could not see all of the instrument- the number of staves or the tuner units but what I could see suggested it be be very similar- and you reckon it is the same. Obviously, it would appear to be a good instrument type based on Jake Wildwood's analysis. Whether or not your mandolin needs any work is not possible to know without a close examination. The bridge on your mandolin is different to the one Jake worked on. I don't know if his example had a replaced bridge. Looking at the bridge on your mandolin it looks to my eye to be newer than perhaps the mandolin's build era. I may be wrong but it looks like what you see from the 20s or 30s.
Here is another of Jake's posts showing an 1890s Regal made mandola- the bridge looks more like an original. However, yours may be an original bridge but I don't think so.

https://jakewildwood.blogspot.com/20...k-mandola.html