ROSE INSTRUMENTS

Hello, I'm Bruce Lee Rose, the builder of the Instruments you see pictured here. I spent years building and repairing stringed instruments of all kinds. Along the way I've been written up in magazines, newspapers, profiled on the PBS television program Wisconsin Life (you'll find two clips from that shoot on our Video page), and filled a wall with ribbons and awards won at fine art festivals. During this time our cigar box guitars have shown up regularly on stages throughout the US, Europe, and even the far east. Cigar box instruments represent a quintessentially American art form. Cigar box fiddles, mandolins, banjos, and especially guitars, have been around for nearly two hundred years, appearing shortly after the introduction of the modern wooden cigar box in the 1830s. My gggrandfather, Robin Rose, carried a cigar box fiddle with him while fighting in the Civil War. I continue to build my cigar box instruments by hand, much as my forebears did, starting with a used wooden cigar..