page_title: Jessie Catherine Kinsley
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Jessie Catherine Kinsley / Biography
caption_attribution_description: English: Oneida Community, Home Building, Oneida, Ny.
context_page_description: Jessie Catherine Kinsley was an American folk artist known for braidings - an artistic medium of her own devising which grew out of her interest in colonial-style braided rugs.
  Kinsley began making braidings at the age of 50, and created many pieces for friends and family. One author described her as having "typified the domestic artist”. Kinsley’s works attracted attention, particularly in the Arts and Crafts world. In 1917-18 alone, her creations were displayed prominently in the annual exhibit of the National Society of Craftsmen, the Craftsmen’s Exhibition of the Carnegie Institute, and the Applied Arts Exhibition of the Art Institute of Chicago.
  Kinsley was also a prolific diarist and correspondent. A selection of those writings and a memoir were collected into a book titled A Lasting Spring: Jessie Catherine Kinsley, Daughter of the Oneida Community, which was edited by her granddaughter Jane Kinsley Rich and historian Nelson Blake. A Lasting Spring details Kinsley's experiences growing up in a utopian community and her subsequent life.
context_section_description: Jessie Catherine Baker was born in the Oneida Community (1848-1880),  a utopian community of religious perfectionists led by John Humphrey Noyes.  In keeping with the practices of the Community, she was raised in communal style. Women in the Community held a wide variety of jobs, but they were typically responsible for the mending and sewing, which would have helped Jessie develop her skills from an early age. The utopian community voted to disband in 1880 when Jessie was 22. The Community then became a joint-stock corporation, eventually evolving into Oneida Limited.
  Jessie married former Community member Myron Kinsley (1836-1907) in February 1880. Myron was assigned by the newly formed company to supervise the construction and operation of the Oneida Silverplate and Canning factories in Niagara Falls, N.Y. Together the couple had three children, and Jessie also helped raise Myron’s daughter from a Community relationship. After living in Niagara Falls and Chicago, the Kinsleys returned to Oneida, New York.
  
  At age 50, Jessie Catherine Kinsley began studying painting with Kenneth Hayes Miller, a leading proponent of urban genre painting. Kinsley was dissatisfied with her painting, but was inspired to create braidings. She wrote:
  "So gradually, I found the fascination of this medium to my mind and fingers, and began making pictures in a wholly original way from my own designs...and unlike my painted pictures, braided pictures grew into satisfactory proportions and some large tapestries came with the years." 
  Her work quickly grew in complexity. As Beverley Sanders noted in an article about Kinsley, she went from "chair mats to large wall hangings that resemble traditional tapestries in their subtlety of color, complexity of design and sensuous texture." Kinsley created braidings until just before her death in 1938.
caption: Kinsley was raised in the Oneida Community, a religious utopian group.  Pictured in a 1907 postcard is the Oneida Community's former home, the Mansion House.
exif: {"Image ExifOffset": "26"}