A luthier, an orchestra and a metal prototype.

Kun is a Canadian company, based in Ottawa, that makes one kind of product: shoulder rests for the violin and viola. Its own timeline, “The Rest is History,” starts in 1968, when Joseph Kun, a music professor and craftsman, left Czechoslovakia after the suppression of the Prague Spring and settled in Ottawa. The company’s brochure describes him as a former head of pedagogy for Slovakia and a self-taught luthier, and says the city’s new National Arts Centre, with its own orchestra in a Brutalist building, promised repair work for an émigré who could fix violins and violas.

The product came out of that workshop. Kun says a design patent for what became the Kun Original was published on 4 January 1972, and its 1998 website described the earliest rest as “constructed entirely of metal, with hand-made parts.” The company dates itself from that year and marked its 50th anniversary in 2022. In 1974 Joseph met Marina, who became his wife and, in the company’s words, focused on “building the Kun market and brand” while he refined the invention. Kun says that in 1978, facing rising demand, it invested in injection moulds, and that in 1987 it mechanised production of the remaining components.

Joseph Kun was also a bow maker. The company says he won a Violin Society of America gold medal for a violin bow in 1978 and three more, for viola, cello and bass bows, in 1982, and that he was invited into the Entente Internationale des Maîtres Luthiers et Archetiers d’Art in 1986. One record that can be checked independently is his book: The Art of Bow Making, by Joseph Kun and Joseph Regh, published in 1994 by Regh-Kun of Wappingers Falls, New York, according to its library catalogue record.

From the Original to the Seven.

The Original set the pattern most of Kun’s later rests follow: a shaped platform that sits on the shoulder, with feet at each end that clamp onto the edges of the instrument’s back. Kun’s 1998 website said the Original combined “a unique shape with end members that swiveled,” with a patented locking device to stop the ends turning far enough to hit the instrument, and that the rests were designed for minimal contact with the violin “so that vibrations would not be absorbed.” In 2006 Marina Kun wrote on the company’s site that its most copied feature was “our trademarked distinguishing appearance, the Kun shape.”

New models followed. The company dates the streamlined Super, with an ultra-fine size adjustment, to 1989. It dates the Collapsible, whose ends fold down for storage, to 1993 on its current timeline and to 1994 on its 1998 website, and a Mini Collapsible for small violins to 1997. The Bravo of 1999 answered requests for a wooden rest, with a base of bent hardwood laminates. Kun says the Voce of 2004 was the first carbon-fibre shoulder rest on the market and won a product-design prize at Canada’s Design Exchange. The Solo of 2016 added a finger lever for size adjustment without screws and patterned cut-outs in its sponge rubber, finished in metallic bronze and black.

The trade press has followed the recent launches. Strings magazine reported in its March/April 2020 issue that Kun had issued its Junior Collapsible in four colours — atomic green, razzle dazzle, blue moon and papaya; in 2021, that a limited “Style Icon” Shanghai set put three patterns by the designer Paul Berthelot on the Bravo; and in its July–August 2024 issue, that the Kun Seven had a pad that bends to the shoulder, three height options, a “coupler joint” for angle and position, and offset feet with internal ribs to limit contact with the instrument, at $285. Kun’s own patent list, updated in August 2025, shows the Solo and the Seven protected in Canada, the United States, Europe, China, Japan and Korea.

Shoulder rests and the string trade.

The seven brands here make the small things string players handle daily, in four trades. Two make shoulder rests. Kun was started in Ottawa by Joseph Kun, who, the company says, left Czechoslovakia for Canada in 1968 and had the design patent for its first rest published in 1972; it says its products are made in Canada. Bon Musica is the trade name of Bonmusica OHG of Vettweiß, in western Germany, whose own product notes describe the bendable, plastic-coated aluminium rest it manufactures.

Two work on the bow. CodaBow began in Winona, Minnesota, in 1993 as a partnership between the materials scientist Stan Prosen and the engineer Jeff Van Fossen, its early website said, and describes its carbon-fibre bows as made in the USA. Hidersine, the British rosin maker, says on its website that it was founded in London in 1890, though the same site has also given 1876; it says the music company Barnes & Mullins bought it in 1987 and moved production to Oswestry, in Shropshire.

Two make strings. Jargar was founded in Denmark by Jarl Hansen, a cellist in the Royal Danish Orchestra, after experimenting from 1950; its website now calls it part of the Thomastik-Infeld family. Warchal, a Slovak company, was established in 2003 by the violinist Bohdan Warchal Jr., concertmaster of the Slovak Chamber Orchestra, which his father founded in 1960.

The seventh, Wittner, makes metronomes and fittings. It says Gustav Wittner founded it in 1895; it is based in Isny im Allgäu, labels almost all its products Made in Germany, and since 2024 has belonged to GEWA music of Adorf, in Saxony.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Made in Canada — with Italian maple.

Kun presents itself as a family business. The company says Marina Kun has been at its helm for five decades, and its website names her as president. Its products, it says, “are made in Canada, using exceptional materials to exacting technical and aesthetic standards.” Its own brochure adds a detail: the Bravo’s bases are “hand-made in Italy from well-figured European curly maple to reflect the back of a fine violin,” then fitted with brass adjusting mechanisms. The wordmark file on Kun’s website is drawn in a dark brown, which this guide takes as its cue.

The company frames its work around two convictions: that “a shoulder rest should adapt to the musician and not the reverse,” and that “acoustic qualities are as important as comfort.” Its website lists the Original, Super, Solo, Collapsible, Collapsible in Colour, Bravo and Kun Seven today; the Voce is not among them. Kun also spends visibly on music in its home city and beyond. It says it sponsors Ottawa’s Chamberfest, where Marina Kun was a founding board member, offers scholarships at the University of Ottawa’s music faculty and supports youth programmes including OrKidstra in Ottawa and Sistema Winnipeg. The company says Marina Kun was profiled by Profit magazine among Canada’s top female entrepreneurs in 2006 and named Outstanding Individual Philanthropist at the Ottawa Philanthropy Awards in 2019.

For a design guide, Kun shows how a single product shape, protected and refined for half a century, can become the brand itself. Compare Bon Musica, the German maker of bendable metal rests, and Wittner, the accessory maker of Isny in Germany. For this guide we use a walnut brown, curly-maple amber and brass with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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