Horn-u-Copia's Display of Makers

Came to the US in Boston in 1960, where he worked either for Graves or Wright. He started Henry Lehnert & Co. in the 1860s along with his brother Carl, and Freemantle. By 1866, he moved from Boston to Phildelphia. In 1876, he began to use American Standard as his trade name until his death in 1916.

Henry G. Lehnert (b Freiberg, Saxony 3 Feb 1838; d Philadelphia 14 Oct 1916) and his brother, Carl (b Freiberg c1830; d Boston 30 Nov 1897) came to America together in c1860. They first received employment from either ELBRIDGE G. WRIGHT or GRAVES & CO., but soon worked for George Freemantle. After Freemantle declared bankruptcy in 1865, Henry and Carl Lehnert (along with Freemantle) formed "Lehnert & Co." In 1866, Carl left the company to establish a partnership with B. F. Richardson in Boston known as "Richardson & Lehnert." In 1861, Richardson had produced the "Bayley model cornet" using Allen narrow-windway valves. Richardson was active as a manufacturer of instruments in Boston until after 1900 (Lloyd Farrar, "Lehnert, Henry G.," in The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments). In the later part of his career he specialized in the manufacturer of percussion instruments

After Carl left the company, Henry moved to Philadelphia to produce his line of "American Standard" instruments. The company invented a tapered leadpipe for the cornet and patented the concept for brass instruments in 1866 (US #52580). Of all the manufacturers in Philadelphia, Lehnert was the only one to work frequently with German silver, and he and ALLEN were the only makers to use narrow rotary valves and flattened [or oval] ports allowing quicker key strokes (Lloyd Farrar, "Lehnert, Henry" in The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments). See ALLEN above for more information about these valves.

It is possible that Philip Frederick (1845-1913) worked under Lehnert. Frederick manufactured brass instruments in Philadelphia from 1880 to c1914, and built instruments for "Seltman," "Le Forestier"," Vivien," "Root & Sons," and "Kohler & Chase." After 1914, Frederick was primarily a dealer and repairer of instruments. Ferdinand Coeuille (c1835-1916) applied some of Lehnert’s ideas to a "convertible cornet/bugle" and also manufactured a "Telescope Cornet." See "HENRY (JOHN) DISTIN" above for information about Coeuille.

Lehnert was represented in Boston in 1865, Paris in 1878, Baltimore in 1878, and at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876 (Waterhouse 1993, 231).

References for this entry were The New Langwill Index (Waterhouse 1993) and Lloyd Farrar, "Lehnert, Henry" in The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments.

Lehnert used American Standard as a tradename and listed his address as 427 N. 9th St. Philadelphia. New Langwill Index lists the address as 926 9th St.

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