bove the patterned field
of our modern wall-papers. Such a frieze may be considered as a
contrasting border to the pattern of the field, much as the border of a
carpet, allowing for difference of material and position; or the frieze
may assert itself as the dominant decoration of the room. In this case
it would be greater in depth than the simpler bordering type. The
interest of the field filling would then be subsidiary, and lead up to
the frieze. In wall-paper friezes the difficulty in designing is to
think of a motive which will not tire the eye in the necessarily
frequent repeats of twenty-one inches. Longer ones have occasionally
been produced, the limit being sixty inches. It is often a good plan to
recur in the main lines or forms of the frieze to some variation of the
lines or forms of the field. If, for instance, the main motive in the
field was a vertical scroll design, a _horizontal_ scroll design upon a
large scale used for the frieze would answer, the field being kept flat
and quiet; or the fan, or radiating shell form, used as a frieze, above
a pattern on the scale plan, would be quite harmonious. Relation and
balance of line and mass, and arrangement of quantities in such designs,
are the chief considerations.

With painting or modelling an artist is freer, as he is at liberty to
design a continuous frieze of figures, and introduce as much variety as
he chooses.

A painted frieze of figures above plain oak-panelling has a good effect
in a large and well-proportioned room, and is perhaps one of the
pleasantest ways of treating interior walls.

[Illustration (f079): Sketch Designs to Show Relation Between Frieze
and Field in Wall-paper.]

[Ceiling Decoration]

Ceiling decoration, again, presents problems of extension in designing,
and the large flat plaster ceilings of modern rooms are by no means easy
to deal with satisfactorily. The simplest way is to resort to
wall-paper, and here, restricted in size of repeat and the usual
technical requirements of the work, the designer must further consider
appropriateness of scale, and position in regard to eye, relation to the
wall, and so forth.

The natural demand is for something simpler in treatment than the
walls--a re-echo, in some sort, of plans agreeable to the floor, yet
with a suggestion of something lighter and freer: here we may safely
come back to rectangular and circular plans again for our l