About the Courtney Pianos website

We have created this site as a means of informing you about our services and our history, but also with the aim of inspiring interest in our passion - the accoustic piano, its history and its design.

As a business we aim to promote interest in older, more traditional pianos rather than the modern mass-production models being produced today. What we do not do is to bombard you with "special offers"; "big discounts"; "money off" deals and the like.

It is a sad fact that, as time passes, increasing numbers of traditional older pianos are being discarded and destroyed, as people mistakenly believe that buying a new piano or digital keyboard is the only alternative once their much-loved instrument starts showing its age.

Much of the site is devoted to restoration, because this is our specialism. The pages describe and illustrate the restoration process, and reveal how we go about deciding which pianos we can restore, and which we must regrettably decline.

In the course of producing our site we are constantly finding out more about the makers and the models they produced, and about the changing fashions in cabinet styles and designs over the last 100 years or so. The current fashion would appear to be for models such as Sheraton, Jacobean, Art & Crafts and Art Deco to mention a few; also for beautiful veneers, real ivory keytops, and elegant cabinets.

The site is still being developed; it is being added to all the time, with new pictures, new information, and new ideas, as and when we can obtain them. It is as yet incomplete, it may never be finished completely !

We are always glad of new facts and information to help us enrich the site further; we are never offended by being corrected, glad to be better informed. We hope the site will leave you better informed, and inspired.

But we are a business, too, and hope that we offer one of our services to you, safe in the knowledge that there will be no sales hype and no arm-twisting; just a willingness to offer advice, assistance and a professional service. The text was written and photos taken by David Hogben, the proprietor of Courtney Pianos.

Courtney Pianos' website was designed and is maintained by Python Technology Ltd, and our thanks go to Colin Hogben for his invaluable help and continuing assistance.