Gibson Resonator Prototype 1975 - Hand carved and hand painted

I purchased this resonator as part of a complete 5-string banjo from Wolfe Guitars down in Jupiter, FL (awesome music store.) They had advertised the whole banjo as being some kind of Gibson prototype with this Bicentennial carving on the resonator. Well, actually the banjo was an early model Deering but the resonator alone was a prototype. According to the handwritten history inside the resonator, Gibson's crafters created this carved resonator as an idea for a Bicentennial Special Edition banjo. This idea wasn't finished in time and Gibson never did a big Bicentennial Special Edition. But as a nod to the Bicentennial, Gibson placed an eagle decal or painted an eagle on some Mastertones in 1976. Over a forty year period, various Gibson employees added touches to this resonator and their names and contributions are listed. Which leads me to believe this piece hung around the Gibson factory in Kalamazoo, Michigan for four decades and it looks fantastic! The colors are brilliant! It has a wire across the top as we display it on the wall as a piece of art. In the last picture you can see that a few of the beads have gone awry. It's always been like that and it is a super easy glue fix but I just left it the original way it was. It looks awesome on a banjo and looks beautiful on the wall, too. It fits all standard 11 inch Mastertone-type banjos (Deering, Huber, Bishline, etc.)