Apart from the extremely rare and valuable original Selmer/Maccaferri instruments, authentic French guitars intended for the Django-derived Gypsy Jazz style are very little known in the US. While the original Selmers-the “gold standard” of this type of instrument-are currently reproduced by makers all over the world today, many native builders in France have since the 1930’s created their own itinerant variations of the design. Antoine Di Mauro was one of the earliest and most celebrated French luthiers to market his own Selmer-style guitars, beginning in the mid-1930’s. Di Mauro guitars were played and heard alongside the more expensive Selmers in the cafes and theatres of Paris from well before WWII, and earned a reputation as fine working player’s instruments. These Di Mauro “Manouche” guitars, alongside Busatos, Favinos and Geromes and of course the original Selmer/Maccaferri design they all descend from constitute the most interesting and distinctive flowering of French lutherie in the 20th Century.

Antoine Di Mauro was born in 1900 in Catagne, Italy, eventually settling with his family in Paris in 1932. Like a number of other Italian luthiers he was soon operating a successful guitar building shop, soon including two of his three young sons. The Di Mauros built many types of guitars and other stringed instruments but were especially renowned for their several distinct models based on the Maccaferri design. Antoine died in 1975 but the Di Mauro shop continued into the early 1990’s under the management of his son Joseph before closing for good in 1993.