Before the home theater, the stereo, the television, or the radio, there was the piano—the first modern home entertainment device. The instrument was the plaything of royals and nobles until around 1880, when production innovations opened up the market to greater audiences. The market boomed for the 40 years that followed, with dozens of piano companies jostling for position and a place in the family home. Amateur musicians could choose between space-saving upright pianos and sprawling grand pianos that measured more than nine feet long, while the exteriors of those pianos ranged from the commonplace to limited-edition tours de force fashioned from exotic woods and festooned with hand-carved details.

When the world’s attention shifted to the battles of the first Great War, the materials and skilled workers required to produce a high-quality piano suddenly were needed for the war effort. Shortly thereafter, the Great Depression decimated the instrument’s market, once again relegating it as an indulgence affordable only to the wealthiest of families. By the time the Second World War ended, the television had emerged and the radio was firmly established, and just like that, the piano’s moment in the spotlight had passed.

Today, rather than taking seats around the piano, people hunker down in front of 70-inch plasma televisions. Nevertheless, a small contingent of music lovers continues to save a place in their homes for a beautiful, 88-key behemoth. Ironically, losing its status as a mass-market must-have provided the piano with a silver lining. Today, the people who build their livelihoods around pianos are the people who care about them deeply and, as such, preserve the instruments to their highest quality.

Antique pianos have a devoted audience, and a handful of firms specialize in pieces from the 1930s and earlier. Their founders share a love of vintage instruments, a preference for brand names (as with car manufacturers, the best-known piano makers survive for a reason), and a conviction that a piano should sound as beautiful as it looks.

A Family Affair

Pianos often are family heirlooms, and 1066 Pianos (www.1066pianos.co.uk), a firm located near Cambridge, England, is itself an heirloom enjoyed by four generations of the Norman family. (The company’s moniker references the family surname—1066 was the year of the Norman conquest, the invasion that transformed the country of England.) Mark Norman’s late father, Roy, founded 1066 Pianos in 1975 with the support of Mark’s late grandfather, Harold. Mark joined in 1987 as an 18-year-old apprentice and is now a managing partner in the six-person workshop that includes his brothers and sons. "Everyone can do every job," he acknowledges, "but in every area, there’s one expert to be the authority on the problem."

At any given time, 1066 Pianos will have about 100 grand pianos on offer as well as 50 uprights, which are more compact and vertically designed. Most of the company’s vintage instruments date to a 40-year period between 1880 and 1920. "We started off with more mundane pianos," Norman says, explaining that the company handled pianos whose brands were respected, but largely unknown outside of their respective countries, "and then we discovered a niche in the market." That niche, he says, encompassed the internationally popular brands, such as Steinway. The company launched its own line of contemporary, designer pianos in 2007, which accounts for about 20 percent of its business, and it also accepts piano restoration jobs, which typically require about 250 hours of work and cost between £10,000 and £20,000 ($15,000 to $31,000). Norman and his team constantly are searching for new additions to the company’s antique inventory and travel throughout the United Kingdom, America, and continental Europe to find them, though Norman is too protective of his sources to provide specific details. However, as Norman explains, for every piano that the company accepts, it declines 10 others. Such discretion is partly responsible for a sales record that averages one vintage instrument per week.

The company also provides a service that some piano fans find controversial. "We can fit it with a self-playing system if the customer wants," Norman says. "It’s quite amusing to insert highly sophisticated electronics into a beautiful vintage instrument, but they do blend well." Unlike the mildly gimmicky self-playing pianos of old, modern systems can be controlled on an iPad and can play back old family recordings, letting the renditions of songs from past generations ring forth from period keys. "You’ve got to convert it to MIDI files, but you can do it," Norman explains, adding that one in three customers asks for the self-playing system.

A 1066 Pianos restoration starts with the compilation of what Norman calls a "passport sheet," or a comprehensive condition report on the instrument. The sheet provides the reference for the restoration, which addresses the inner workings of the instrument—the soundboard, the strings, the hammers, and everything else involved in producing music—as well as the appearance of the case. When called for, "we remake the parts to pattern," he says. "You get a beautiful instrument totally in keeping with the original. Our goal is to get it to perform as the maker intended." As with its restorations for clients, the 1066 Pianos team spends an average of 250 hours on each piano that it restores for sale, with prices ranging from £20,000 to £100,000 ($31,000 to $156,000).

Currently, 1066 Pianos has a limited-edition Louis XV–style Steinway Art Case, circa 1900, with intricate inlays of kingwood and rosewood as well as magnificently carved legs. "Usually, you get carving or inlay. To get a combination of the two is very special," Norman explains, adding that the inlay work "would be done on a computer now, but in those days, it was done by hand. And to produce those legs by hand probably took a week a leg." The company fitted the Steinway with a new soundboard, keyboard, and other parts. The case also needed polishing but less attention overall. "What you’ve got is a beautifully finished exterior with a brand-new interior that will meet and beat the best out there," he says of the piano, which can be purchased for £100,000 ($156,000).

Another charming rarity is an Empire-style piano from around 1910, manufactured by the French producer Gaveau and available for £35,999 ($55,900). "He was a reasonably big maker who made fairly small, fairly pretty pianos," Norman says of Gaveau. The instrument boasts six legs accented by gilt metal and also includes Gaveau’s signature. "It’s got a smaller voice, but it still sounds beautiful," Norman adds. "In a concert hall, it would be too small. In a room, it’s lovely." Restoring it was a straightforward job, with the exception of the keyboard. Its keys were more slender than usual and the key fronts, or the key surfaces that face the player, were made of wood rather than ivory. "I’ve never seen another piano like it," he says.

Classically Trained

Piotr Folkert first encountered vintage pianos in his career as a concert pianist. The musician—a native of Poland who moved to the U.S. in 1987—played several antiques, including one formerly owned by the Polish composer Frédéric Chopin, before Folkert began assisting friends with the importing of restored French and German pianos to the United States in the late 1990s. Not long after, in 2000, Folkert struck out on his own with Art & Piano (www.artandpiano.com), located in Johns Creek, Ga. "Vintage pianos are obviously very attractive instruments," he says. "Certain pianos from the past have an aura."

Today, like Mark Norman, Folkert directs a small team of five craftsmen who restore five to six pianos annually. He assesses the instruments that he considers purchasing for later sale but does not perform any of the restoration work himself. "I play it and try to see what it is capable of," he says. "The next step is to analyze the condition the piano is in." For every piano he accepts, Folkert rejects four or five others, primarily because their sound quality falls short. "I am a pianist," he says. "I don’t look at the piano as furniture. I try always to pay a lot of attention to the way a piano sounds." Restorations can take anywhere from six months to one year, and work for private clients, which can run from $10,000 to $30,000, makes up about 30 percent of Art & Piano’s business. Sales of new pianos also cover 30 percent, while restorations for stock make up the remaining 40 percent. The company normally has about 30 pianos available with prices starting at $25,000 and topping out at $750,000. Up until recently Folkert had declined to carry modern pianos, but last year he allowed Art & Piano to serve as the exclusive southeastern U.S. dealer for two long-standing German piano companies, Steingraeber and Steinberg. Because customer satisfaction is vitally important, the company will honor requests for installations of player piano technology, but Folkert isn’t a fan. "I try to stay away from it," he says. "I try to be as honest in a restoration as I can be."

Probably the most significant piano that Folkert’s company has placed to date is an all-original mahogany 1838 Erard that now resides in the Frédéric Chopin Museum in Warsaw, Poland. "The institute has a collection of period instruments, but it did not have this type of piano," says Folkert, who explains that it is a good example of the type of piano that Chopin played. "The ivory is unbelievable on the instrument; it feels very unusual, different to the touch," he says, explaining that the sensation of laying his fingers on the shorter and more narrow keys, which had earned their yellow patina over almost two centuries, was one of overwhelming authenticity. Likening the experience of playing the Erard to viewing a beautiful antique, Folkert says, "It has an element of being a little irrational, but we experience art in many ways."

The Erard’s advanced age demanded a lighter, more sparing touch. According to Folkert, any piano produced before 1850 or so retains its value only if its inner workings are left undisturbed. "Our job was basically to regulate and clean the piano," he says.

The most spectacular piano that Folkert has handled was a unique seven-foot Louis XVI-style Steinway Art Case, circa 1907, that was commissioned by the wealthy mining heir William Guggenheim as a Valentine’s Day gift for his wife, Aimee. The piece, which is available for $750,000, features allegorical oil paintings on its case and a tantalizing serial number, 123000. According to Folkert, Steinway tends to assign numbers ending in zeros to its extra-special instruments. "I was stunned by the beauty of the piano, the physical appearance, but also the serial number," he says, adding that it was in "incredible playing condition" when he acquired it and needed only modest tweaks. Most of the work involved the exterior. "I compare the restoration of the case to the restoration of the Sistine Chapel in Rome," he says, alluding to how his team carefully removed layers of grime to reveal the brighter colors beneath. "It’s all now absolutely pristine."

Critical Acclaim

It wasn’t the client herself, but rather her piano technician who placed the call to PianoGrands (www.pianogrands.com) in 2008. The client had acquired an 1849 Collard & Collard piano that originally was special-ordered by Pedro Romero de Terreros, namesake of an 18th-century Spanish count who made a fortune in Mexican mineral mining. To put such an instrument in context, a near-identical Collard & Collard piano, gifted to the Mexican emperor Maximilian from Napoléon III, now resides in Mexico’s National Museum of History.

However, the arid southwestern climate had not been kind to the British-made piano. "It was in very dry conditions, and it didn’t like it," says Anne Acker, who partnered with her husband, Chris, to launch their Pennsylvania-based company in 2003. The arid air had tormented the piano’s lid until it cracked and caved in. Several carved details, including part of a foot, had fallen off or vanished. Its current owner had purchased the piano in this decrepit state and enlisted PianoGrands with the daunting task of rehabilitating it. Fortunately, the damage was more cosmetic than acoustic. "It was very well cared for internally," Acker says. "It was a fun project to do."

Because the work was mostly aesthetic, PianoGrands needed two months to return the Collard & Collard to its former glory instead of the more typical three to six months. One of the trickier aspects was chasing down supplies of the luxurious woods that decorated the piano. "It took a while to find the source material," Acker says of the French walnut that was needed to replicate the lost carvings, but she says the client’s reaction made it well worth the effort. "She flipped out," Acker recalls. "She was so excited and happy. She was absolutely stunned."

While client-commissioned restorations were all but nonexistent when the company began, today Acker says those projects account for 75 percent of PianoGrands’ business. Even so, the company continues to acquire vintage pianos for sale, readying about four per year. While Art & Piano accepts only 20 percent of the pianos that it sees—and 1066 Pianos accepts less than 10 percent—the Ackers are even more selective, rejecting more than 99 for every one that they accept. "They have to have good bones, they have to be interesting, and they have to be musically important," Acker says, explaining that "musically important" means "it has to be a type of piano with a quality that will make good sound." About 10 percent of the pianos that she and her husband handle date to 1850 or earlier.

Whether a piano is intended for stock or for a client, the Ackers (who also employ two part-time staff) put every instrument through a rigorous inside-and-out examination, shooting anywhere from 100 to 200 photographs and devoting a day to compiling a condition report. Most restoration jobs cost between $10,000 and $25,000, while vintage pianos for sale range from $10,000 to as much as $200,000, though the majority are priced between $29,000 and $50,000.

Acker’s husband left a pharmaceutical career for a life in pianos, but she began playing the piano at age three and long has been involved with vintage instruments (she also manages a second company that specializes in harpsichord restoration). While she occasionally accepts contemporary pianos in trade, Acker does not resell them through PianoGrands, nor does she have much love for them. "You cannot play 19th-century music on modern pianos," she says. "I struggle, and many players struggle, to interpret 19th-century music on a modern piano. On an old piano, it just happens. It just has what you need."

Player piano technology vexes her as well. "Chris and I have wonderful arguments about it," she says. "We have installed it in vintage pianos for clients who insist upon it. I prefer not to, because we must make permanent, irrevocable alterations. We have to cut a big slice out of the bottom of the case [to fit the equipment]." However, she notes brightly that she succeeds in talking clients out of installing the technology about 10 percent of the time.

But she has no quibbles about sending Chris—who likes to joke that he went to Princeton to become a truck driver—as far as Houston to deliver a vintage piano. "When you finish a restorations on a really elaborate art case piano, you don’t want to stick it in a regular freight guy’s truck," she says. "You want to bring it yourself."