For many of us, washing clothes by hand is no longer a necessity. Yet the simple ridged device used before the advent of washing machines is still in production today and continues to be used all over ...

Derived from West African hamboning and popularized in the U.S. through 20th-century jug bands, the washboard has been used as a makeshift percussion instrument for more than 100 years. By adding ...

In their heyday, washboards were instruments of laundry day drudgery. Today they're more likely to be instruments of good clean fun, as Conor Knighton now tells us: For serious players of the ...

Did you know the home of the longest remaining washboard factory is right here in Ohio?There's a festival that takes place every year in Ohio since 2000 to celebrate washboards and the music that ...

One of the more popular instruments that Ken and Trisha Brooks sell is not really an instrument at all. It just so happens that the rough metal surface of a old-fashioned washboard makes a dandy ...

To be sure, it constitutes a conversation piece. The Rube Goldberg-esque curiosity within the musical-instruments collections at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History (NMAH) consists ...