About Us
Sykes & Sons is a family piano house with its origins in Yorkshire and its workshop today in Stockport.
The name first appeared in the piano trade in 1810, when William Sykes established a business in Leeds that would pass to his son John and thereafter through successive generations of the family.
During the century that followed, Sykes music rooms and workshops became established across Yorkshire. Broadwood & Sons, Collard & Collard, Ibach and C. Bechstein were among the makers represented, while tuning, teaching and recital formed part of the wider musical life surrounding them.
Today, under Macauley Alexander Theodore Sykes, the family name belongs once again to the pianoforte.
The setting is rather different from the music rooms of the nineteenth century. Sykes & Sons now works on a deliberately intimate scale, with a small collection of instruments and a workshop in which the emphasis remains firmly upon the piano itself.
Leeds, 1810
William Sykes established the business in Leeds in 1810.
It passed in due course to his son John and thereafter to succeeding generations, occupying premises around Briggate and Boar Lane before becoming established on Albion Street.
The workshop accompanied the music rooms from an early stage. John Sykes became known throughout the region as a pianoforte tuner, maintaining instruments supplied by the business as well as those already in private ownership.
As Leeds prospered during the Victorian period, the business grew with it.
Broadwood & Sons and Collard & Collard were among the principal British makers represented, and by the later nineteenth century J. W. Sykes was trading from Albion Street with instruments, sheet music, teaching and recital brought together beneath the family name.
The Albany Music Rooms
In 1883, James H. Sykes extended the family's presence to Halifax with the opening of the Albany Music Rooms on Commercial Street.
The premises combined music rooms with recital space and facilities for the preparation and repair of instruments. Their opening was marked by a public pianoforte recital, reflecting the part such establishments played in the musical life of Victorian towns.
The instruments themselves reflected an increasingly international trade.
Alongside Broadwood and Collard stood pianos by the German houses of Ibach and C. Bechstein.
John Sykes became sole agent for Bechstein in Halifax, with instruments held at the Albany Music Rooms rather than supplied only to order.
Premises in Bradford followed, extending the family's presence across Yorkshire. Behind the music rooms, the workshops prepared new instruments and maintained those already in service in homes, schools, chapels and public halls throughout the region.
Sheet music, organs, harps and other instruments also passed through the rooms, but the pianoforte remained the constant.
A Changing World
The First World War changed the European piano trade profoundly.
Restrictions on commerce with Germany interrupted established relationships with Continental manufacturers, including Bechstein and Ibach.
The decades that followed brought wider changes to musical life and to the provincial music houses that had flourished during the nineteenth century.
The Sykes presence gradually contracted. Premises diminished and, in time, the old music rooms disappeared.
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Sykes & Sons Today
Today, Sykes & Sons is directed by Macauley Alexander Theodore Sykes, whose place within the business remains principally at the bench.
Macauley entered the piano trade through practical workshop work rather than retail. Years spent working directly with instruments established the technical foundation upon which the present Sykes & Sons has developed, and continue to shape the character of the business today.
From its workshop in Stockport, Sykes & Sons prepares a carefully selected collection of pianos for sale, alongside private client work and a limited number of restoration commissions.
The arrangement is a simple one. The people who select the pianos are also the people who prepare them and remain available to care for them afterwards. Inevitably, this places a natural limit upon the number of instruments that can pass through the workshop.
There is a particular affection for British and European pianos, reflecting both the history of the name and the instruments with which the workshop has become most familiar. Selected Japanese instruments also form part of the collection.
Some arrive requiring considerable work; others need remarkably little. Age, reputation and the name on the fallboard may tell us much about a piano, but none guarantees that it is a good one. That judgement is made one instrument at a time.
More than two centuries have passed since William Sykes established his business in Leeds. The music rooms of Briggate, Boar Lane, Albion Street and Commercial Street belong to another age, as does the world in which Broadwood, Collard, Bechstein and Ibach instruments stood together beneath their roofs.
The piano trade has changed enormously since then, and Sykes & Sons today is a very different business, in a different town and on a different scale.
What remains is a family name with a long association with the pianoforte, and another generation of the family making its living among them.
For all the history, it is still a business concerned with pianos.
We rather like it that way.