My Yoshinoya toe tap sent me down a side path in my tap gear collecting. Today, most tap dancers use Capezio taps, I guess and probably few dancers think much about the history of the taps themselves. Tap Dancing has been around for a long time now and as we know, it has had several periods of great popularity. Surely there must have been many different fabricators of taps around the world over all these years. My teacher, Stanley Kahn, once told me that he used had taps called "Morgan". But I have never seen one. I have tried to find old tap shoes in flea markets, thrift shops and internet auctions but without much success.
Here are all the great boxes.
One time I found a boxful of old taps and I was thrilled to get them. Most were made under the Selva nameplate. At that time I had never heard of this company before. the graphics on the boxes are quite charming and look like 50's style to me. Each tap is stamped with the company name and the designation "SuperTap". My collection now includes 17 boxes with men's taps sets and also taps for women's high heels.
Great taps galore!
With the help of the Internet I found a great site that filled in the blanks about Selva and Capezio and all my taps. It's called The Perfect Pointe and it deals mostly with ballet information. Here's an important little quote from that site:
Selva was founded by a man by the name of James Salvaggio, otherwise known as Jimmy Selva, who worked for Capezio until 1925 when left Capezio and started Selva and Sons-- the makers of the Selva pointe shoe. Capezio bought the Selva name in 1970 and retired everything except some specialized products like taps.
This is why we all buy Selva Staccato taps from Capezio today.
I would like ot hear from anyone with information about old, collectible heel and toe taps and the companies that manufactured them. matsumoto@tap-wonderland.com
