Dick Knight started as a banjo and clarinet player but a hand injury turned him to making instruments. After WWII he worked for Selmers music store in London, repairing and building instruments, and also with Selmers shop manager, Joe Van Stratten, building Stratten-brand guitars.

When his wife became ill, he worked as a mill foreman until her death in 1963, when he began making guitars full-time. Based in Surrey, England, Knight made all types of guitars but specialized in archtops such as the Imperial. Although it appeared to be a standard archtop jazz guitar with a floating pickup, the top bracing was actually carved and integral with the top. The neck construction was also a special Knight feature that he called the “billiard cue” design.

Knight suffered a heart attack in 1986 – about the same time this Imperial was made – and quit making guitars. He died in 1996, but his son-in-law Gordon Wells (who had been working with Knight since 1967) and Wells’s son Rob carried on the business.