The Ruder Family Piano!

My grandmother came from a musical family. Her mother was a school teacher and taught my grandmother how to play piano. After getting married and moving across the country she did not have an instrument to play on. She volunteered to play for the local church and one of the members had a piano they did not use and graciously gifted it to my grandmother. This is the piano I want restored. My grandmother spent 60 years of her life teaching local children to play on this piano. She taught bother her daughters, but they lost interest after a few years. Out of 5 grandchildren, I am the only one who took lessons with her. As a child I would pull out random music from her shelf and ask her to play. I would sit in the kitchen when she would teach and wished that I would play as well as her older students. It is because of my grandmother and this piano that I am a music teacher today. 5 years ago when her dementia became more progressed she moved in with my aunt. While packing up her house, she had former piano students and their families come help her pack. It was to me, the only grandchild who had learned to love piano as much as she did, that she left the piano. I have taken steps to care for the piano, adding a humidifier and tuning it to a lower pitch, but it has sadly become more decoration than anything else. I am almost afraid to play it for fear of causing more damage. My hope with winning this restoration is to see this piano brought back to its former beauty and to continue on my grandmothers legacy of teaching others how to play with this amazing instrument.

• YEAR 1800-1900
• MAKE Steinway & Sons
• FINISH Black / Ebony
• CATEGORY CONTESTANT