In the seventies I used to haunt the antique stalls of Portobello Road in London at every available opportunity, looking for mandolins, concertinas and anything else I thought I might be able to play. In one basement cavern I bought a German lute-guitar from a dealer named Ruben Greene (later Ruben Rubens). Sometime after I was told that he had accumulated a huge collection of banjos. His connections in the antique trade meant that almost anybody finding a banjo would give him first refusal. I believe the collection could be viewed on request, but I never got the chance to do so. I often wondered what became of Ruben and his banjos.

I have only found one entry about this man via Google. There is an article by Lewis M. Stern of Arlington, Virginia on the British banjo-collecting scene in "The Banjoist's Broadsheet" here:-

Banjoist's Broadsheet No 198 October 2006 (pdf download - 10 pages)

The collection, apparently indiscriminately acquired without any record of background or provenance, comprised some 800 banjos, from junk to incredibly rare specimens. They were eventually disposed of (late eighties?), mostly to another collector, Akira Tsumura, who had earlier used examples from Ruben's collection to illustrate gaps in his own extensive collection for an illustrated catalogue of banjo types. Known as "The Red Book", it was originally published at $28 - still obtainable, but you would need to be keen:-

Banjos: The Tsumura Collection, Akira Tsumura
Hardcover: 132 pages
Publisher: Kodansha America; 1st edition (April 1984)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0870116053
ISBN-13: 978-0870116056

6 available on amazon.com from $375.00

There's also another book by him:-

"One Thousand and One Banjos, The Tsumura Collection", Akira Tsumura
Hardcover: 904 pages
Publisher: Kodansha International (JPN) (May 1994)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 477001421X
ISBN-13: 978-4770014214

apparently no longer available, but was selling for $1,000+

The more you dig, the more you find - comments on the Banjo Hangout forum suggest that Tsumura ran into tax problems and sold many of the banjos from his collection. Bernunzio Vintage Instruments (Rochester, NY) acquired 120 open-back banjos in October 2007.

Some of Ruben's banjos ended up in museums - the Kendall Whaling Museum (Sharon, Massachussets) has a unique scrimshaw-decorated whalebone banjo. There may be an illustration of it on Google Books (America's Instrument, the Banjo) but it would take some time to load (I didn't wait!)

I would be interested to know if anybody ever got to see Ruben's collection before it got split up, and if the whereabouts of other instruments are known.

Any Mudcatters near Sharon? (Their website is under construction, so can't access anything there). I would like a picture of the scrimshaw banjo if possible.

Ross