History – Selmer Factory (1/3)
The history of the Selmer-company begins in the late 18th century. Founded in 1885 by Henri Selmer his company “Selmer (Paris)” at first starts building only wind-instruments (and still do until today).
Born and raised as the son of a military-conductor and musician Henri Selmer himself started to play the clarinette as a small child.
At first the production of the Selmer-company was only concentrated on building clarinettes and mouth-pieces.
In 1908 Henri Selmer started developing and building saxophones together with their inventor Adolphe Sax (image left).
Henri´s brother, Alexandre Selmer (Image 1 top, right), himself a famous clarinettist who already plays for the wolrldfamous “New York Philharmonics Orchestra” conducted by Gustav Mahler in 1904, solely uses the instruments of his brother Henri from then on, making them known in America and world famous later on.
Some years later, around 1909, Alexandre was joining the company of his brother and in 1910 opening his first own shop selling and distributing Selmer-Instruments in America.
Already in 1910 the company has a big catalog of instruments to be sold: Clarinettes, Flutes of all kinds, Saxophones, mouth-pieces and all kinds of accessoires. In 1922 the first Selmer-Saxophone is sold under the name “A-Series, 1922 alto” (image left). Also other models will be sold “Modele 22” under the term later on.
In the year 1931 Henri Selmer meets with the italian luthier and guitarrist Mario Maccaferri and the year 1932 he joins th ecompany. Together they decide to additionally start building guitars using the name “Selmer“.
These special Selmer acoustic Jazzguitars, designed by Mario Maccaferri in these early 1930ies, were to become worldfamous later on, beeing played by guitar-maestro Django Reinhardt.
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