it is a good example of what one can do with a tempting wall
paper in an occasional room, a guest room, for instance.

Some of the figured wall papers are so decorative that they are more
than tempting, they are compelling. The Chinese ones are particularly
fascinating. Recently I planned a small boudoir in a country house that
depended on a gay Chinoiserie paper for its charm. The design of the
paper was made up of quaint little figures and parasols and birds and
twisty trees, all in soft tones of green and blue and mauve on a deep
cream ground. The woodwork and ceiling repeated the deep cream, and the
simple furniture (a day bed, a chest of drawers, and several chairs)
were of wood, painted a flat blue green just the color of the twisty
pine-trees of the paper.

We had a delightful time decorating the furniture with blue and mauve
lines, and we painted parasols and birds and flowers on chair backs and
drawer-knobs and so forth. The large rug was of pinky-mauve-gray, and
the coverings of the day bed and chairs were of a mauve and gray striped
stuff, the stripes so small that they had the effect of being threads of
color. There were no pictures, of course, but there was a long mirror
above the chest of drawers, and another over the mantel. The
lighting-fixtures, candlesticks and appliques, were of carved and
painted wood, blue-green with shades of thin mauve silk over rose.

Among the most enchanting of the new papers are the black and white
ones, fantastic Chinese designs and startling Austrian patterns. Black
and white is always a tempting combination to the decorator, and now
that Josef Hoffman, the great Austrian decorator, has been working in
black and white for a number of years, the more venturesome decorators
of France, and England and America have begun to follow his lead, and
are using black and white, and black and color, with amazing effect. We
have black papers patterned in color, and black velvet carpets, and
white coated papers sprinkled with huge black polka dots, and all manner
of unusual things. It goes without saying that much of this fad is
freakish, but there is also much that is good enough and refreshing
enough to last. One can imagine nothing fresher than a black and white
scheme in a bedroom, with a saving neutrality of gray or some dull tone
for rugs, and a brilliant bit of color in porcelain. There is no hint of
the mournful in the decorator's combination of black and white: rather,
there i