author
Mary Lois Kissell
A pioneering textile scholar and fieldworker, this early twentieth-century writer explored weaving and basketry across Indigenous cultures in the Americas and Africa. Her work helped bring careful, comparative study to everyday materials that many scholars had overlooked.
1 Audiobook
Aboriginal American Weaving
by Mary Lois Kissell
About the author
Mary Lois Kissell was an art educator, museum anthropologist, and researcher known for her studies of textiles and basketry. Smithsonian records describe her as a writer on Indigenous textiles in the Americas and Africa, note that she was educated at Columbia University, and say she became the first professor in the Household Art department at the University of California, Berkeley from 1912 to 1914.
Her books and articles focused on how cloth, yarn, and basketry were made and used, treating these traditions as serious subjects of cultural and historical study. A later scholarly reassessment calls her a pioneer in the comparative study of textiles and basketry and highlights the importance of her fieldwork.
Kissell's published work includes Aboriginal American Weaving and Yarn and Cloth Making, books that show her interest in both research and teaching. Although she is not widely known today, the surviving record suggests she played an important early role in textile scholarship.