Country music is a staple in the life of Doug Watson of the Flagtown section of Hillsborough Township. The history of the instruments of the genre’s masters has always intrigued him.
He has more than 25 stringed instruments, ranging from a student cello to a mandolin-banjo autographed in person by Pete Seeger.
He also makes guitars out of materials he finds around the house, at flea markets or whenever something catches his eye. He fashions them into creations in his off-hours from his job as a service adviser at Fullerton Ford in Somerville.
One of his pieces built with pie tins and a family ice bucket is now part of the collection of the new Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona.
Mr. Watson moved to Hillsborough in 2000. Born an Army brat to Master Sgt. Artice Virgil Watson and hairdresser Jenny “Jean” Delcielo Watson, of Somerset, Mr. Watson was influenced by music from an early age.
Though he plays, writes and listens to a diverse selection of music, he attributes his love of the history of American music to his father, a Texas transplant to New Jersey, who exposed his son to the old-time country music of Hank Williams, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash.
His collection started when he grafted the old headstock of his demolished Epiphone guitar to the body of a clunky rectangular cigar box. His successful first attempt got him started on designing and creating new stringed instruments from found objects.
This led to Mr. Watson and his friends and family searching for interesting cigar boxes, cookie and pie tins and other odds and ends for future handmade creations. He recently started work on a guitar from a chrome pot lid he spied at a flea market. Put an inverted pie tin on top of that, he said, “and now you have a nice sound chamber,” he said.
He occasionally diverges from the usual wooden box body instrument. His creation that interested the Arizona museum incorporated a high-polished Mrs. Smith’s pie tin, a brushed aluminum ice bucket bowl, a hand-carved poplar wood neck and the “S” from another pie tin.
Mr. Watson commandeered his wife’s vintage 1950s ice bowl thus, his name for the piece, Jan’s Ice Bucket Guitar.
After visiting their sons out west, his wife, Janet Cantore-Watson, encouraged her husband to approach the museum to see if it would like to add one of his pieces to its worldwide collection of instruments.
Mr. Watson said the museum was lacking old Americana instruments and specifically any cigar box guitars. He and his wife went to Phoenix with two of his handmade instruments.
They turned the instruments over to curators Frank Gonzales and Jennifer Rogers. After a few months, the Watsons received a confirmation letter from Ms. Rogers, assistant registrar, stating his ice bucket guitar had been accepted by the museum.
Mr. Watson said he thought the museum was struck by the fact that it was made solely out of rudimentary materials, had a wooden neck and strong strings under tension.
Mr. Watson, his sons, Mike, Jon, Tony, Dean and Joey Rae, his grandsons, Kaya and Tyler, his granddaughters, Jolie and Danica, his wife and their daughter-in-law, Lauren, will celebrate Mr. Watson’s 60th birthday by visiting the museum in October.

