M. Louise Baker

Mary Louise Baker (1872–1962) was an American archaeological illustrator, resident artist at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (1908-1936), and an art teacher at the George School.

Education and career Nio at Nara, 1902, drawn by M. Louise Baker, while a Pupil of the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art Mary Louise Baker was born on August 4, 1872, in Alliance, Ohio. In 1892, at the age of 19, she struck out on her own, first to Chester County, Pennsylvania, where she completed her education and taught primary school, and then on to Philadelphia, where in 1900 she enrolled in the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art. In 1903, she obtained a teaching position at the George School, a Quaker boarding school near Newtown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. In 1908, she was hired as a part-time illustrator by the archaeologist George Byron Gordon, then the General Curator of American Archaeology, at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, where she worked as the Museum Artist until 1936. She worked as an archaeological illustrator, did illustrations for Museum publications and exhibits, restoration work, and also made models and replicas.

Baker wrote and illustrated stories and poems for children throughout her career, and published illustrations in the Children's Page of the Youth's Companion Magazine and other magazines for children. Baker also led groups of women on summer tours of European museums.

M. Louise Baker undertook her first work for the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in 1908 on the Museum's Nubian pottery collection. This work was at the request of David Randall-MacIver, who was then the director of the Museum's Nubian expedition. She earned $80 a month.

Baker's work at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology attracted wider notice, leading many "other ... archaeologists, who had only seen examples of her published work, [to] request... her participation in future efforts." were particularly admired as "both scientifically valuable and also exquisite art." Still others have been more recently reproduced.

The Royal Tombs of Ur Ram in a Thicket, Ur excavations (1900), drawn by M. Louise Baker Beads (Chapter 18) Ur excavations (1900), drawn by M. Louise Baker

In 1932, Baker traveled to the British Museum in London, England, and then on to Baghdad, Iraq, to paint materials held there from the Joint Expedition of the Penn Museum and British Museum to Mesopotamia. Leonard Woolley served as the excavation director for the Expedition, which uncovered the Royal Tombs of Ur.

During her return from Iraq, Baker visited museums and private collections in Germany, Spain, France, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, and England to add to her illustrations of Maya ceramics.

Later life and death M. Louise Baker left the Penn Museum in 1936 when, owing to her failing eyesight, she had difficulty producing illustrations. She retired from the George School two years later, in 1939, together with E. Constance Allen, who was dean there from 1925 to 1938. Baker and Allen purchased a home together in Wallingford, Pennsylvania. For the next ten years, Baker taught classes on writing and illustration, carpentry, furniture making, metal working, and ceramics. She also gave talks on local and Quaker history and her archaeological adventures, acted in amateur theater productions in Chester County, and led tours to European museums.