Piano 89

A piano captured in a dusty & slightly dank corner in the big old church at the village misleadingly called Newchurch. A piano with a very old and tired cover, with which care was needed on removal as it would have been easy to tear it. An unusual keyboard cover in that you had to lift the front cover above before you could lift the keyboard cover below. Don't recall coming across such an arrangement before. But the plus was that the keyboard cover was out of the way when the piano was in use, as snapped above.

A Challen 988, I thought a new name and turned up references 2 and 3. A decent, mid range upright from a London firm better known now for its baby grands. But long since expired and its name was last seen being appropriated by a Malaysian piano manufacturer. The people at reference 5?

I then thought to check the archive, and found lots of challen. But this turned out to be caused by my fondness for the word 'challenge' combined with the Windows search function allowing part word matches. But went on to search the hard way and found that there had been a Challen about fifteen months ago, noticed at reference 4. Clearly in one ear and out the other.

PS 1: it is odd how some south and east Asian countries are big into pianos and some are not. Maybe one day I will make a list. I associate to my younger brother who used to examine for the Associated Board of reference 6. Examining in this part of the world was a much sought after jolly for him and most of his colleagues.

PS 2: according to Gemini, the list is China, South Korea, Taiwan and to a lesser extent Japan. And, when prompted, to an even lesser extent Malaysia and Thailand. Which is entirely plausible, but I imagine that Gemini has just joined up the dots, made intelligent guesses based on peripheral or incidental information. Would do for the pub but not for a bet. Maybe I could persuade the Associated Board to give me an analysis of the relevant examinations by country? Maybe there is some international piano sellers trade organisation which could do piano sales by country?

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/07/piano-88.html.

Reference 2: https://www.robertspianos.com/cdetails.php?ID=74&Make=Challen-Pianos.

Reference 3: https://sheargoldmusic.co.uk/challen-pianos/.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/02/piano-66.html. One of the baby grands mentioned above?

Reference 5: https://www.kawaipiano.com.my/.

Reference 6: https://www.abrsm.org/en-gb.

Group search key: pianosk.