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WINSTON-SALEM -- Liberace would have loved this piano.

Spotlights dance down on 216 jewels of lead crystal, set in dazzling diamond patterns into the piano's black lid, sides, legs, fallboard and bench.

Each jewel features several hundred to several thousand intricately cut, ground and polished pieces of crystal -- nearly a half-million in all.

Renowned Winston-Salem glass artist Jon Kuhn joined talents with the Bösendorfer piano company of Austria to fashion this limited-edition 7-foot-4-inch concert grand.

Kuhn remains dazzled by the creation, which arrived at his gallery in late December after three-plus years in the making.

"It was five, 10, 20 times more beautiful than I had imagined," he says.

Don't count on seeing it up close. It belongs to Kuhn and isn't on public display.

But a well-heeled buyer could take it home -- or one just like it -- for a cool $1.2 million.

That reportedly makes it the most expensive new limited-edition grand piano available.

Even with its high price tag, Kuhn says, he's getting international interest -- but no sales yet.

Order one, and your name can appear in gold leaf, sandwiched in glass under the Kuhn-Bösendorfer name.

Want something bigger, with more jewels?

Kuhn and Bösendorfer can create a 9-foot-6-inch grand piano for $2.5 million.

Kuhn even envisions a fancier "ultimate piano" for $3.5 million.

"That one would be over the top," he says.

Kuhn eyes potential buyers for his first model.

Art collectors.

A high-profile university music department.

Star performers.

The late Liberace, known for his glittering costumes and pianos, would have felt right at home tickling its keys. And speaking of keys, it has 92 -- four extra on the base end.

"Pianists come in here and say, 'This thing plays like butter,' " Kuhn says.

"There are performers out there who would want to play this, and we are talking to a few of them."

Kuhn, 59, has become a star himself for his laminated glass sculptures, found in private collections, galleries and more than 40 museums worldwide.

Large laminated glass cubes, wedges, pendulum clusters and spheres with interiors of intricate color are his signature.

He and the 20-member staff that helps execute his designs turn out 100 to 175 pieces a year, no two exactly alike. They range in price from $6,000 to $1.2 million.

His gallery displays a few.

"Blue Manifest," an 18-inch circular glass sculpture: $185,000.

"Rococo Surprise," a ribboned glass cube of reds and blues: $175,000.

"First Bloom," a large shimmering glass cube on a motorized spinner: $480,000.

And beneath a hanging pendulum cluster: the new star of the show, the inaugural Kuhn-Bösendorfer piano.

Kuhn doesn't play piano. But decorated art case pianos shown at a 2003 High Point furniture market inspired his idea to adorn one with his glass art.

"A piano allows for the marriage of the performing and visual arts," Kuhn says.

In 2005, he sparked interest from Ruggero Piano in Raleigh, which sells Bösendorfer (pronounced Bursendorfer) models.

"He was looking for the right dealer and manufacturer to work with, that had the capabilities of inlaying this glass," Richard Ruggero says.

The idea went to Eric Johnson, Bösendorfer's eastern regional sales manager and U.S. operations manager.

Founded in 1828, Bösendorfer long has worked with artists, architects and designers to create art pianos.

But until he saw Kuhn's glass art, Johnson couldn't envision the final product.

"Most people think of glass work as being blown glass, and it's difficult to control dimensions," Johnson said. "When you see his machined glass, it made sense that we could do a cross-Atlantic collaboration."

Kuhn created a dozen designs before settling on one.

Bösendorfer would build the piano, a model that normally sells for $130,000, then inlay Kuhn's custom jewels.

The project stretched Kuhn's skills, too.

He had to create smaller, shallower pieces, yet with the same prismatic quality and complexity as the core of his larger works.

The piano's fallboard, which covers its keys, would be 5/8-inch thick. If jewels there were too thick, they would hit keys.

"So I had to come up with a whole new system of making glass jewels," Kuhn said.

The jewels consist of multiple thin layers of lead crystal. Layers are laminated with museum-quality epoxy, cut, ground and polished, then laminated to similar pieces and cut, ground and polished again.

"It's a cut, grind, polish, laminate process, doing that time and time again until I have something like this, that has 1,000 or 10,000 components," Kuhn says.

He also had to make sets of jewels of the same exact size and shape, a stretch for any artist accustomed to making one-of-a-kind works.

So when he needed 64 small square jewels, he made 88 just in case.

After 15 months of painstaking work, jewels were ready. Kuhn shipped them to Bösendorfer in Vienna, where artisans inlaid them in the piano's spruce cabinet.

Bösendorfer machined a notch in the piano's cast-iron plate to make room for lid jewels when its lid is closed.

Kuhn's studio inset matching jewels on each side of the lid and connected them, so that light shines all the way through.

Jewels don't change its sound, Ruggero says.

"When it came out of the crate and we played the first notes, I knew it was one of the nicest, most beautiful and powerful-sounding pianos for this model that I had ever played," he says.

Johnson, Bösendorfer's U.S. operations manager who coordinated the Vienna factory's work with Kuhn, sees the piano as a work of glass art.

"Some people think it's over the top and just don't get it," Johnson said. "I think this is one of the most beautiful (creations) we have ever been involved with."

Kuhn is quick to share credit with artisans at his studio and in Vienna, perhaps 80 in all.

He will draw on experience with its jewels to create another novel product: a new line of jewelry.

He likes the way that one visitor to his gallery described the piano.

"He said, 'This piano is today's Fabergé egg,' " Kuhn said, referring to jeweled eggs made in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

"This is for the person who wants the ultimate collectible."

Contact Dawn DeCwikiel-Kane at 373-5204 or dawn.kane@news-record.com