There’s little to distinguish the farm building in Kent, southeast England, from others nearby, except for one thing: the royal warrant over the door.
“By appointment to Her Majesty the Queen, conservators and restorers of pianos,” it reads.
Inside the building in Biddenden, near Ashford, is a treasure trove of 26 quirky and rare pianos, amassed over a lifetime by Californian David Winston.
Winston’s entire collection is now being sold off at auction, with estimates that some individual instruments could go for up to £60,000 ($83,000, 71,000 euros) each.
“I’m nearly 71 now, it’s kind of time,” Winston, who initially trained as a violin maker before specialising in pianos, told AFP.
Some of his work has included on pianos belonging to Queen Elizabeth II herself but he is cagey about the work he did on the Royal Collection’s keyboards.
And with good reason: other than saying he worked on “quite a few of their instruments”, he is mindful of the story of a woman who once spilled the beans on royal bra fittings.
She lost her warrant not long after.
What he does say is that other major commissions have included restoring the French Pleyel piano belonging to his “great hero” Frederic Chopin.
He also worked on Ludwig van Beethoven’s Broadwood piano at the Hungarian National Museum.