132 
House & Garden 
This Crex de Luxe Nursery Rug 
(No. 41949 ) to be had in the 
9x12 ft. size for $22.50 
c Do Your Children Play 
With Germs? 
This enlarged photo¬ 
graph — magnified many 
times — shows the germ 
colonies remaining in a 
wool rug, even after it has 
been thoroughly beaten. 
This actual photograph of 
the surface of a Crex Grass 
Hug — magnified many 
times—shows that germs, 
dust and dirt find no lodge¬ 
ment in the tough wire 
grass of which Crex Rugs 
are made, but sift through 
to the floor, to be easily 
swept up. 
T HEY are bound to if you 
have a wool rug in your 
nursery. Though thoroughly 
cleaned and beaten, the em¬ 
bedded dirt still holds millions 
of disease-breeding germs. 
A Crex Grass Rug in your 
nursery does away with this 
danger. Germs thrive in the 
soft fine texture of wool rugs 
but there is no place for them 
in the enamel-like shell of 
Crex wire grass. 
But be sure the rug you buy is 
a genuine Crex. Crex Rugs 
are made of tough wire grass, 
twisted and woven to give 
them the strength that defies 
the wear of little shuffling feet. 
Beware of inferior imitations. 
SEND TODAY 
for the INTERIOR DECORATORS’ RUG 
BOOK containing carefully selected 
designs and patterns of Crex Grass 
Rugs—in full colors. It is yours for 
the asking so that you can see how 
well Crex Rugs match and enhance 
any decorative scheme. Then see the 
full line at the best furniture and de¬ 
partment stores. Prices for the pop¬ 
ular 9 x 12 ft. size range from $ 11.00 
to $22.50. 
WIRE GRASS RUGS 
Dept. 404 
CREX CARPET CO., 295 Fifth Ave., New York City 
0» CREX «0» • 
«0» CREX :.«<3 
Wall Papers for a Variety of Hallways 
( Continued, from page 130) 
contrast as possible to the woodwork. 
It will reduce the effect of all those 
lines and tend to make them disappear. 
For the bungalow type hall, intimate¬ 
ly connected with the living room, 
wide open, light and airy, one is limited 
only by the paper in the living room 
itself. The two rooms can be treated 
as one, provided the living room paper 
is not too strikingly decorative. 
If the paper in that room has a de¬ 
cided design then it is permissible and 
attractive to put a plain paper, har¬ 
monious in texture and color, in the 
hall and let its color be an introduction 
to your climax in the living room. 
Sometimes there is a background 
effect exactly like the background of 
the decorative paper. That is good. Or 
it may be an entirely different paper 
but in texture and colors such as to 
harmonize with the living room walls. 
What to use in the hall? If dark, a 
light paper preferably with yellow in it. 
If narrow, a pattern with free open 
movement or a landscape with vistas, 
or a scenic paper both interesting and 
decorative. If low, a striped paper or 
one with a stem design reaching up. 
If spaces are ordinary, use pattern 
that is interesting to break up their 
monotony. If small and cut up, use 
some of the fine • blends that give a 
slight feeling of alternation of light 
and dark. 
Scenic papers, blends, stripes, land¬ 
scapes, formal figures, every one has a 
place and use. Study your problem. 
Look at it with these three elements of 
light, size and interest in mind and then 
search for the paper that gives the an¬ 
swer to your own conditions. 
Architectural Prints as Decoration 
(Continued from page 67) 
Perelle, very little artistic merit. They the fine arts, these strange nightmares 
can be found quite easily and at a very will reveal its stupendous potentialities, 
reasonable price, either in complete They will learn from these exorbitant 
sets or broken up. Kip's engravings visions to understand the beauties of 
of London are the most sought after sane architecture; just as we learn from 
and consequently the most expensive the symptoms of mania to understand 
of his works. It is worthy of remark the workings of sanity, of which mad- 
that by the end of the century the topo- ness is but a distortion and an exag- 
graphical draughtsmen were turning geration of certain aspects, 
into these magnificent water-color ar- Collectors should be careful to avoid 
tists who are among the glories of the late prints of Piranesi's work. After 
English art; artistic expression came to the artist’s death his sons went on re- 
be preferred to the surveyor's drawings, printing from his plates; and these, as 
The purely formal architectural draw- they wore out, were re-touched and 
ing is richly represented in 18th Cen- finally steel-faced, some of them actually 
turv England. In Colin Campbell’s serving to make reprints to the present 
“Vitravius Britannicus’’, for example, day. These late prints have a coarse- 
there is a fine collection of formal en- ness and lack of quality which makes 
gravings of considerable artistic merit, them much inferior to the work pro- 
Towards the end of the century the duced in the artist’s lifetime, 
publisher Ackerman got hold of a num- Of the other great Italian architec- 
ber of excellent artists and produced tural engravers of the 18th Century we 
those numerous prints of architectural can only mention one—or at least one 
and topographical scenes which are so family, the Bibienas. These men de- 
eagerly (especially the colored aqua- voted themselves principally to architec- 
tints) sought after at the present time, tural stage settings and their engraved 
It is now time to speak of the great- fantasies for the theatre have a startling 
est architectural engraver of the 18th decorative quality. 
Century—and indeed of all centuries— Architectural prints can be used for 
the Italian, Gian Battista Jiranesi. In wall decoration in almost any type of 
his endless series of plates representing room that indicates the heritage of the 
views of Rome, we find united all the past and in which a not too personal 
qualities which an architectural draughts- atmosphere pervades. They are superb 
man should have—accuracy with a in an oak paneled study or library, they 
sense of atmosphere, a feeling for mass are equally effective in a Georgian room 
and large sweeping composition with of white paneling and even in some 
a faithful respect for detail. His essays types of early Victorian rooms, now 
in imaginative architecture—the famous enjoying a popular revival, they seem 
“Prison” series, and the fantastically quite at home. They are especially 
grandiose reconstructions of ancient appropriate for the hallway or foyer, 
Rome—have a strange inimitable beauty because they are impersonal decora- 
of their own. To those who have never tions, and they can be recommended 
taken architecture seriously as one of for use in one’s private office. 
ON HOUSE & GARDEN’S BOOK SHELF 
T HE Old English Herbals. By 
E leanour Sinclair Rohde. Long¬ 
mans, Green & Co. 
In that far-off day when flowers were 
medicines and gardeners the doctors, 
materia medica went hand in hand with 
floriculture. In fact, in the Middle Ages 
there was little gardening done, as we 
understand it, save herb gardening. 
Consequently gardening books of those 
days were books on herbs, and known 
as herbals. To a study of this quaint 
and fascinating literature the author de¬ 
votes the pages of her present scholarly 
work. 
The name of Parkinson, of course, is 
known to every gardener with the 
slightest interest in the history of his 
art. So also Gerarde and Nicholas Cul¬ 
peper and these other later 17th Century 
herbalists. And on these the literature 
is quite ample. Where Miss Rohde’s 
investigations are especially valuable is 
in the period prior to these well-known 
masters—the period of the Anglo-Saxon 
herbals as found in the early fragments, 
such as the Leech Book of Bald (900- 
950 A. D.) the Saxon translation of the 
Herbarium of Apuleius and the Grete 
Herbal. In this fragmentary literature 
the superstition surrounding plants and 
their medical properties was deeply 
rooted in pagan superstitions and, of 
course, science was unknown. 
The later 16th Century notables, such 
(Continued on page 134) 
