"And yet, in the face of old Byzantine, Sicilian, and other early woven patterns with their recurring animals, and of Mr. Crane's consummately ornamental patterns, it cannot be said that repeated animal (and even human) forms do not make satisfactory pattern.
"For an illustration of this, look at the wall-paper design by Crane: 'This is the House that Jack built.' It seems, at first glance, to be a complicated ornamental design; after long searching, you at last see plainly every one of the characters in that jingle that children so love."
William Morris, and his interest in wall-paper hanging, must be spoken of, "For it was Morris who made this a truly valuable branch of domestic ornamentation. If, in some other instances, he was rather the restorer and infuser of fresh life into arts fallen into degeneracy, he was nothing short of a creator in the case of wall-paper design, which, as a serious decorative art, owes its existence to him before anyone else."
In his lecture on The Lesser Arts of Life, he insisted on the importance of paying due regard to the artistic treatment of our wall spaces. "Whatever you have in your rooms, think first of the walls, for they are that which makes your house and home; and, if you don't make some sacrifice in their favor, you will find your chambers have a sort of makeshift, lodging-house look about them, however rich and handsome your movables may be."
A collector is always under a spell; hypnotized, bewitched, possibly absurdly engrossed and unduly partial to his own special hobby, and to uninterested spectators, no doubt seems a trifle unbalanced, whether his specialty be the fossilized skeleton of an antediluvian mammoth or a tiny moth in a South American jungle.
I am not laboring under the exhilarating but erroneous impression that there is any widespread and absorbing interest in this theme. As the distinguished jurist, Mr. Adrian H. Joline, says, "Few there are who cling with affection to the memory of the old fashioned. Most of us prefer to spin with the world down the ringing grooves of change, to borrow the shadow of a phrase which has of itself become old-fashioned." Yet, as Mr. Webster said of Dartmouth, when he was hard pressed: "It is a little college, but there are those who love it."
Besides, everything—Literature, Art and even fashions in dress and decorations,—while seeming to progress really go in waves. We are now wearing the bonnets, gowns and mantles of the 1830 style and much earlier. Fabulous and fancy prices are gladly given for antique furniture; high boys, low boys, hundred-legged tables, massive four-post bedsteads, banjo clocks, and crystal chandeliers.
Those able to do it are setting tapestries into their stately walls, hangings of rich brocades and silk are again in vogue and the old designs for wall-paper are being hunted up all through Europe and this country. Some also adopt a colored wash for their bed-room walls, and cover their halls with burlap or canvas, while the skins of wild animals adorn city dens as well as the mountain lodge or the seaside bungalow. So we have completed the circle.
The unco rich of to-day give fabulous sums for crystal candelabra, or museum specimens of drawing room furniture; and collectors, whether experts or amateurs, and beginners just infected with the microbe are searching for hidden treasures of china, silver and glass.
Why should the Old Time Wall-Papers alone be left unchronicled and forgotten? In them the educated in such matters read the progress of the Art; some of them are more beautiful than many modern paintings; the same patterns are being admired and brought out; the papers themselves will soon all be removed.