g8 DECORATIVE 



the tendency seems to be toward a recurrence of strongly 

 figured wall coverings. I remember the joy with which 

 a talented and tasteful woman told me that she had 

 unearthed twenty or thirty rolls of wall-paper, made 

 some fifty years ago in a strongly decorative way, show- 

 ing not a small, constantly repeated figure, but a broad, 

 sketchy design, with which she wished to adorn her 

 new dining-room in the vogue of the present. 



, _, . The plan I am about to suggest af- 



An Onion r j .. •. ^ ^l ^ i . 



Motive fords opportunity to exercise the talent, 



taste, skill and fancy of the home-maker 

 upon the walls, and the result need not be of a charac- 

 ter to cause one to see flaming grapes in a nightmare, 

 or to have a Japanese delirium. The idea is simply to 

 select some object that has decorative possibilities, to 

 photograph it with due consideration of its lines, and 

 to make enough prints to serve as a border next a 

 wainscoting, or as a frieze above the picture railing, or, 

 indeed, below, if the general plan of the room will so 

 permit. Curiously enough, the photograph which gave 

 form to this idea was of an object not usually considered 

 decorative in any sense, or, indeed, in any way beauti- 

 ful — namely, the odorous spring onion ! Two of these 

 silvery skinned vegetables, with their green tops, had 

 been photographed in a pleasing composition, and 

 several prints, lying close together, produced promptly 

 the thought of a repetition which would be decorative. 

 Since then, after much study and experiment, the plan 

 has been tried with entire success and satisfaction, and it 

 is confidently recommended as a way in which the home 

 rooms may reflect, not the ideas of some decorative wall- 

 paper artist on the other side of the world, but the best 

 thought of the people in the home. 



p. . , In planning for this sort of a decora- 



L.in^ tion, one must avoid the pitfall of a bad 



placing of mass or lines. For instance, 

 as I write I am looking at three unsuccessful examples 

 which promised absolute success when they were 

 planned. One is a cluster of two peaches with their 

 leaves — a beautiful negative and a charming picture. 

 Repeated, however, the peaches tend to carry the line 

 across the room instead of up and down, and they give 



