John Kimberly Mumford

Born in New York in 1863 and educated at Princeton, John Kimberly Mumford worked as a journalist and writer during a period when newspapers, industry, and global trade were all expanding quickly. Sources describe him as a staff writer for New York papers, and he also spent time covering the Spanish-American War in Cuba.

Mumford is best remembered today for books such as Oriental Rugs and Outspinning the Spider: The Story of Wire and Wire Rope. That mix of subjects says a lot about him: he seems to have been drawn to topics that combined craftsmanship, commerce, and the story behind how things were made.

He died in 1926. Although he is not widely known now, his work still surfaces in library catalogs, public-domain collections, and reference sources, especially in connection with rug history and early twentieth-century nonfiction.