Cunningham built pianos for half a century, then stopped.

Cunningham dates itself to 1891 and to Patrick J. Cunningham, whom the company calls “an Irish immigrant with a craft and a dream.” Piano Buyer’s brand profile states: “Cunningham Piano Company began manufacturing pianos in 1891 and, in its time, was the largest piano maker in Philadelphia.” Its factory stood at 50th Street and Parkside Avenue, the Philadelphia Inquirer recorded in 2008.

Then the factory stopped. Piano Buyer says “The original Cunningham factory ceased production in December 1943. The company was reopened in December 1945 as a piano rebuilder and retailer.” The Inquirer’s 2008 account put the end of manufacturing at 1941, after the business was bought by Louis Cohen, a former Cunningham technician who, English Wikipedia says, turned it into a restoration shop in Germantown; the company itself says only “just before the beginning of World War II.” We say it stopped building pianos during the war, and give Piano Buyer’s date.

For more than sixty years, then, Cunningham was a piano company that did not make pianos. It rebuilt and restored them, and sold others’ new ones; English Wikipedia, citing a 2016 newspaper report, says it served as the North American warranty centre for Bösendorfer. The name survived on a shop, a workshop and a reputation, not on new instruments — which is exactly the situation in which a heritage name becomes valuable to someone who wants to put it on a piano again.

Revived in 2008 — by the business that kept the name.

Cunningham’s revival is unusual because it came from inside. In February 2008, the Inquirer reported, Timothy Oliver and Richard Galassini bought the company, and that year it began selling new pianos under its own name again, from a five-foot grand at $8,190 to a nine-foot concert grand at $44,000. Today its about page names “Rich Galassini, Co-Owner” and “Tim Oliver, Co-Owner.” The name was never sold separately from the business; the same company that had carried it as a rebuilder put it back on new instruments.

The new pianos are made in China. Piano Buyer lists them as “made by: Ningbo Hailun Musical Instruments Co. Ltd., Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, China; with Cunningham Piano Company, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.” The company’s dedicated site for the line says the same thing in its own way: “With the help of legendary piano designer George F. Emerson, the expert piano technicians of Cunningham’s piano family, and the award winning Ningbo Hailun Musical Instruments, the New Matchless Cunningham has been created from the ground up.” (The Inquirer’s 2008 report placed the factory in Shanghai; the maker is in Ningbo.) Hailun also builds for other Western names — Piano Buyer reports that Bechstein’s Zimmermann line is made there too.

Piano Buyer’s 2022 survey of the American market placed Cunningham among the “foreign-owned companies that own factories in China or contract with Chinese manufacturers to make pianos for the U.S. market.” Cunningham is in fact American-owned; the survey’s point was the contract with a Chinese maker. The same survey observed that “Many American distributors and dealers contract with Beijing, Pearl River, and other makers, selling pianos in the U.S. under a multitude of names.” Cunningham is unusual among them in contracting under a name it had never stopped using.

When a name lapses — and when it does not.

Cunningham never let its name lapse, and that is what makes it different from most revived piano names. In the United States, a trade mark is not an heirloom. Under the Lanham Act, a mark is “abandoned” when “its use has been discontinued with intent not to resume such use,” and “Nonuse for 3 consecutive years shall be prima facie evidence of abandonment.” European and British law set a five-year clock for “genuine use,” and British law adds a further ground for revocation: a mark that, through its owner’s use, has become “liable to mislead the public, particularly as to the nature, quality or geographical origin” of the goods. A piano name that falls silent can therefore be lost — and later taken up by someone else.

The trade knows the practice well. In a 2019 decision on the name of the German celesta maker Schiedmayer, the US Trademark Trial and Appeal Board described how sellers buy “unbranded, ‘no-name’ pianos from China” and later brand them “with marks of unaffiliated manufacturers,” a practice it called “apparently not uncommon in the keyboard instrument industry” — such pianos, it said, “are known in the industry as ‘stencil pianos’.” It quoted a buyer’s guide: “Frequently these names come from old, defunct American companies that still command some recognition in the marketplace.” The board cancelled that registration because the use would “falsely suggest a connection” with the real Schiedmayer firm.

Cunningham is the opposite case. The company that put the name back on new pianos in 2008 is the same company that had used it, as a rebuilder and retailer, by its own account continuously since it reopened in December 1945. Its new pianos are built in China, and it says so on its own line’s site; but the connection the name suggests — to a Philadelphia piano business founded in 1891 — is a real one.

An old superlative revived as a product name.

The line is sold as “The Matchless Cunningham,” a superlative with the ring of an old advertisement. The company’s current line is gentler: “Philadelphia’s favorite piano company has been making dreams come true since 1891.” Its blog calls it “Philadelphia’s oldest and most respected piano company” — its claim. The business today runs showrooms in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania; Cherry Hill, New Jersey; and Delmar, Delaware, and restores pianos in its Philadelphia factory. Its management team today includes a vice president, Hugh Sung, alongside the two co-owners.

For a design guide, Cunningham shows a revival done from continuity rather than acquisition. The date 1891 is honest because the company has existed, in one form or another, since then; what changed in 2008 was the product, not the owner of the name.

For this guide we use a Liberty blue and a brass with a classical serif. These are an unofficial interpretation, not Cunningham’s colour values, and nothing of its logo is reproduced.

Keep Cunningham’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.