Robin Blanton

Robin Blanton is an Associate Researcher in the Rem@ke project, where she is engaged with the microecology around the 1781 Johann Andreas Stein claviorganum. Her research focuses on ways that objects anchor and organize relations, ideas and ideals. Her doctoral dissertation (2012) on the Stein claviorganum considered how keyboard inventions in the late eighteenth century both asked and answered the question, “What is a work of art?” In research conducted for the Orpheus Instituut in Ghent, she looked at the piano as an instrument of both physical and social perfection. She learned metal organ pipe making at Taylor & Boody Organbuilders in her native Virginia and worked from 1998 until 2005 at the Research Workshop of the Göteborg Organ Art Center (GOArt), where she built organ pipes and clavichords and documented workshop research into historical tools and craft processes. At Rem@ke, she will coordinate the documentation and reconstruction of the Stein claviorganum, including exploring (autho)ethnographic methods for telling about embodied knowledge in craft.