Matt Sellers’ shop is in an old brick factory off South Broadway, hidden at the bottom of a steep, spiraling road cut into a bluff. You drive down until you’re almost at river level. Then you walk in and step backward in time, surrounded by upright grands built in the late 1800s.
Tall and skinny, his hair combed back like a country/Western star’s, Sellers wears vintage threads because, he says, “with new clothes, anyone could have that same shirt.” His apartment’s full of antiques he’s restored. “It’s like these pianos; each one is unique.”
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He started teaching himself to play the piano when he was 13, and when he asked for his own piano, his grandparents found him a free one. “It was busted up. A lot of notes didn’t work,” he recalls, “so I figured out how to pull them apart.” He spent a few years as an apprentice, restoring and rebuilding pianos, then opened the St. Louis Vintage Piano Co. Now he buys old pianos from farm auctions, estate sales, and families who are leaving town and don’t want to bother moving a worn-out piano that doesn’t play well.
“People don’t value them like I do,” Sellers says quietly, running his finger along the keys of a Steinway that was built in 1888. “You couldn’t afford to build a piano of this kind of quality today. But back when these were built, a piano was a family’s only form of entertainment. The piano was usually the most expensive item in the house.
“This one’s all in original condition, 1887, real ivory and ebony kids, Brazilian rosewood veneer,” he says, moving to another piano. “And this,” he points with a flourish, “is a St. Louis Cabinet Grand, made here by Thiebes-Stierlin. The building still stands on Olive, next to the Ludwig Lofts.”
Recently Sellers sold a piano to a New York pianist, and he had the movers pick up a purchase on the way back. “Friends had told me, ‘Man, you’ve got to keep your eyes open for an Ahlstrom.’ They didn’t build many; they’re rare.” And gorgeous, this one with ornate black-on-black grillwork.
His goal is to keep as much of the original piano as possible. When the keys have yellowed to a custard color, he knows he can whiten the ivory: “I use hydrogen peroxide and ultraviolet light. It takes about a week—which isn’t bad, considering they took 100 years to yellow.”
He resists replacing chipped ivory keys with today’s slick white plastic. Most pianists still prefer the vintage ivory: “There’s a texture. And it’s porous, so if you’re nervous and sweaty, it will absorb the moisture.” Sellers pops off the old surface with a heat gun, then selects an ivory shard from the Christmas cookie tin in which he saves them. Carefully he affixes it to the key, using a special clamp to distribute its weight evenly.
Sellers never sees “just an old beat-up piano.” He sees past glories, and he visualizes the future: “how great I can make it sound; how beautiful I can make it look.”
