6S 
House O' Garden 
Wa l Pai> e rt s 
) h\a 
Repapering your house 
is a delightful combina¬ 
tion of duty and pleasure. 
Thibaut’s artistic papers 
set the Wall Paper fash¬ 
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modern and so increase 
its value far more than 
the actual cost of paper- 
ing. 
Send us your dealer’s 
name and ask for our 
“Home Service Chart’’^ 
which if carefully filled 
in and returned will en¬ 
able our Interior Deco¬ 
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samples of wall paper 
and drapery for your en¬ 
tire home without cost to 
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Ask for Edition 1613. 
T H I B A U T 
WALL PAPERS 
DECOR AT E 
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Using Ciphers and Monograms in Decoration 
(Continued from page 32) 
centuries many beautifully designed 
printers’ marks or ciphers were con¬ 
trived which often displayed the high¬ 
est excellence of graphic art. In a far 
less elaborate and sometimes in an 
amusing form there were the distinctive 
water-marks of the paper makers, the 
punch marks of silversmiths, and the 
badges of other craftsmen as well. Not 
a few of these lesser manifestations pos¬ 
sessed genuine decorative charm. 
But it is as a present factor, alto¬ 
gether practicable and highly valuable, 
in decoration that we are here con¬ 
cerned with the use of personal em¬ 
blems, ciphers and monograms. 
Louis XII’s Ciphers 
A modern method of application we 
may best derive by taking a brief sur¬ 
vey of some of the most effective ways 
in which they were employed in the 
past. Louis XII of France adopted as 
his personal device the porcupine. That 
of his wife, Anne of Brittany, was a 
hound. The illustration shows one of 
the chimney-pieces in the Chateau de 
Blois where the crowned porcupine be¬ 
comes a most striking motif of deco¬ 
ration. Flanking it on one side is a 
crowned “L” for Louis and, on the 
other, a crowned “A” for Anne. 
Another chimney-piece in the same 
chateau bears two great wreathed 
medallions in one of which is the 
crowned porcupine while in the other 
is the crowned hound. Decoratively 
speaking, such emblems are both trench¬ 
ant and appropriate. There can be no 
mistaking for whom they stand. At the 
same time, a decoration that obviously 
means something and carries with it 
some story, the intent of which the be¬ 
holder cannot misun¬ 
derstand, is generally 
far more interesting 
and forceful than a 
decoration that is 
merely decorative and 
bears with it no espe¬ 
cial significance. 
F r a n c i s I—that 
Francis of the Field 
of the Cloth of Gold 
—chose as his per¬ 
sonal emblem the 
salamander, and all that portion of the 
Chateau de Blois where he exercised 
his lavish proclivities is fairly writhing 
with salamanders and bristling with 
crowned “F’s” introduced in every con¬ 
ceivable place from the chimneys and 
parapets outside to the balustrades and 
over-mantels within. Again, the per¬ 
sonal badges of Louis XIV—the rayed 
sun and the crowned L—lent them¬ 
selves admirably to decorative purposes 
and were freely used by the designers 
of the period. Marie Antoinette’s 
crowned monogram was a graceful, if 
not an especially original or forceful, 
decorative motif that was frequently 
used with an agreeable effect. 
One need scarcely be reminded of the 
admirable decorative results obtained by 
using the roses of England, the thistle 
of Scotland or the lilies of France. Like¬ 
wise the British Lion, the American 
Eagle, the Gallic Cock and the Floren¬ 
tine Lilies have by themselves so often 
supplied appropriate decorative motifs 
that their mere mention is enough to 
bring up a series of pictures before the 
mind’s eye. 
In a slightly different field, St. Law¬ 
rence’s gridiron, the symbols of the four 
Evangelists, and the proper attributes 
of the several saints, by which they may 
always be identified, have furnished a 
store of decorative motifs that has tre¬ 
mendously enriched the art of the world 
from the first century of the Christian 
era to our own day. 
Using Ciphers 
To sum up the matter in brief, a 
cipher, personal emblem or monogram 
is a sort of decorative shorthand—it 
conveys at least one whole idea, and 
oftentimes a whole 
story, by one symbol. 
The use of such 
badges or marks 
opens up a wide op¬ 
portunity for terse, 
pithy lexpression 
which may frequent¬ 
ly, and very appro¬ 
priately, be combined 
with a bit of playful¬ 
ness or humor. 
(Continued on p. 70) 
Early Renaissance pa¬ 
per water-marks 
TwosRenaissance prmt- 
er’s marks 
BRONX 
485 WHlis Avenue 
BOSTON 
96-98 Federal Street 
WASHINGTON HEIGHTS BROOKLYN 
(New York City) 3621 Broadway Flatbush & DeKalb Aves. 
NEWARK 
141 Halsey Street 
On her bed’s head Marie Antoinette had carved her personal mono¬ 
gram, one. that would be adaptable to modern decoration 
