The Fort Dodge Messenger: March 13, 1905


Wallpaper is Now the Question

Two Cornered Paper for Parlors and Halls; Flowers, Fruit or Landscape For The Dining Room and Bright Warm Colors; Combined With Taste

Wall paper again becomes an imminent consideration in the minds of house owners and housewives, and although it is much dreaded when with its mention comes unbidden visions of paper shavings, ladders, and a pungent odor of seemingly everything.

This year and every succeeding year the task of selecting paper becomes less of a bore and mroe of a pleasure. It begins to take more thought and more of an artist’s eye to paper a house appropriately, not becasue the paper is not pretty, far from it, but because the tastes of the American are becoming more and more aesthetic.

The paper itself is showing every day how much more attention is being devoted to its designing and it will be a great relief to be able to get away from some of the hideous designs of the past. Among the newest styles of wall paper are the two tones and the duplex, says a Fort Dodge merchant adn these two designs are indeed the finest expression of wall paper art.

These two styles are designed especially for halls and parlors, and are more appropriate for this use than for any other because they are in the more delicate shades and contain only one color, with a pattern faintly suggested by a slightly different shade, or perhaps a different finish of the same shade which shows up delicately in certain lights.

The designs in this as well as in other styles are all large, sketchy, and usually  flowers, everything now being more or less in poster styles. Anything large and artistic is the proper thing, and takes the public fancy.

Fruit designs are very popular for dining rooms, as are also landscape designs in tapestry effects. these are generally used on but half or three quarters of the wall, with plain ingrain paper of the same shade on the remaining space. Ceiling (sic) are best when plain and the moire ceilings are as popular as ever. Outside of this use for ingrain paper, it is fast losing its former popularily.

Almost all the paper is hung clear from the ceiling in rooms with very high ceilings, and then a drop ceiling is better than a border. This is the American style, but it is said that the new imported papers have revived the old style of borders, and are displaying them in the samples.