Dr Mike Baldwin

Mike Baldwin is harp maker and researcher based in London and West Cork.  He completed a degree specialising in harp making in 1995 before working for Pilgrim Harps, the U.K.’s largest maker.  In 2010 Mike completed a masters which surveyed newly discovered documents surviving from the Erat harp-making family.  In 2018 he completed an AHRC-funded doctorate examining the wider London harp industry.  In 2019 Mike received The Terence Pamplin Award for Organology from The Worshipful Company of Musicians, London.  He is currently working on a replica of the first pedal harp, made by Jacob Hochbrucker at the beginning of the eighteenth-century.  In 2019 Mike published his first book, Mizen: Rescued Folklore, about the folklore of County Cork’s Mizen peninsula followed a year later by Harp Making in Late-Georgian London.  In 2022 Mike published Skibbereen: Rescued Folklore, focusing on the folklore of Skibbereen in County Cork.  He is working on a new book entitled The Ancient Irish Harp in Folklore which is due for release in 2024.