Ida Strawn Baker

Ida Strawn Baker worked as an American art educator and coauthor whose work connected textile technique with classroom design. Batik And Other Pattern Dyeing, written with Walter Davis Baker and published by Atkinson, Mentzer in 1920, explains wax-resist batik alongside stencil, tie, stick, and other pattern methods. The book moves from historical examples and color principles to practical exercises, illustrations, and problems suitable for art students. Its educational purpose is central: technique becomes a way to study proportion, repeated motifs, material behavior, and the relationship between design and use. Library records identify both Bakers on the original byline, although modern listings sometimes foreground Ida alone. The surviving edition includes examples connected with Shortridge High School, placing the volume within the expansion of applied-arts teaching in the early twentieth century. Batik And Other Pattern Dyeing remains useful as a record of how American instructors presented Asian-derived textile practices at that time, though current readers can also recognize the historical limits of its terminology and cultural framing.