LOL, Jim, that cranky reader you mentioned is missing a lot in Life I bet. Dancing with the Devil indeed! I looked up P. Allen's website as I'm always interested in learning more about folks. WOW....let's see... he loves books, loves being outside, loves animals, paints, (and oh, have to mention he's pretty darn easy on the eyes too, LOL). I think I'm in love!! Speaking of which, back to the first photo, I finally noticed the wall color and love that. I don't have any sage green but keep wishing I did, such a soothing, pretty color to me. (my den/computer-TV/dog room was supposed to be that color but a comedy of erros had it ending up tan. 5 yrs and I'm still aggravated my plans got waylaid.) I need to look up P Allen's show and see it now that you introduced him. Oh, I like your term of "decorative chaos", very good! hugs, Karen

We are in the process of putting in lighting to light up some art in a hallway. Our designer has recommended Modulightor which have the right look, but seem a bit pricey. The only cheaper option we've seen is House of Troy lighting, but are there any others - in a vintage brass finish would be ideal? Thanks! Modulightor: http://www.modulightor.com/m/3/minilux-hrl-art-lights-03 House of Troy: http://www.houseoftroy.com/products_indv.aspx?Category=Family&Item=Direct+Wire+Picture+Lights&Family=Direct+Wire+Picture+Lights&ItemNum=DT24

Hi Blessedbe. I used to live in an incredible Streamlined Deco apartment building built in 1940, with terrazzo floors, glass block walls & steel casement windows with metal Venetian blinds 12 feet wide--the widest made--and although it's been 25 years since I lived there, I still love that sleek look. OK, so you don't mention whether your whole place is, like mine was, actually of the period, or if it's newer construction, and you also don't say whether you're going for an authentic period look--as though your bath might have been decorated during the era & somehow survived intact till now, or whether you're making a room that's about the era & the style. They're two totally different things. Either way, forget Maxfield Parrish & Alphonse Mucha. Both were wonderful artists, but they're both way earlier, and their lush colors & lavishly ornamental style have nothing to do with the slick, high-contrast style typical of late Art Deco that you're after. In fact, when Bette Davis' elegant movie characters were swooning about in sleek penthouses & nightclubs, both Mucha's & Parrish's artwork would have been considered hopelessly old-fashioned, and all that adding them into the mix would do is muddy the concept. Paris & San Francisco, on the other hand, were both sophisticated & up-to-date, with plenty of shops & theatres & apartments & hotels executed in just the glamourous style you're after. In fact, Paris' exhibition in 1937 & San Francsco's in 1939 represent the pinnacle of the style's development just before the dark days of WWII put a sudden end to the party. But watch out if you're thinking about using photos: there are a lot of classic photos of both cities that, like the Mucha & Parrish posters, would only confuse your decor. The Eiffel Tower is too old by half a century to say anything about the Art Deco era, and while the Golden Gate bridge is an icon of 1930s design, neither image would have been used to decorate a bathroom of the period. Nor would a picture of Bette Davis, talented though she was. No, those things--movie star portraits, photos of landmarks of the period, vintage magazine ads for, say, Evening in Paris perfume or Packard automobiles, covers from Fortune magazine or Vogue, colorful fruit crate labels, vintage travel posters featuring the Pan-American Clipper or the 2oth Century Limited--while perfect for a room that's ABOUT the period/style, are all wrong for a bathroom that's meant to look as though it's FROM the same period. OK, maybe a struggling actress or a shopgirl living on the cheap in an efficiency apartment might hang a picture of Bette Davis in her tiny bathroom, but only becasue she could tear it out of a magazine for free and hang it in a ten-cnt frame from Woolworth's. But a wall full of ads & commerical art wasn't likely to appeal to most people, even if they wanted to hang artwork in their baths, which generally, they didn't. For the upper classes--the target audience, after all, for the styles that we call (thanks to Kelly Werstler & Bevis Hiller) Hollywood Regency & Art Deco--the whole point of 1930s baths was Glamour Without Fussiness. That's why they went for rich or striking new materials on the walls--marble, Vitrolite, colored or engraved mirror--and often, strong color in the fixtures: by making beauty inherent in the materials themselves, they could eliminate superfluous ornamental touches. You wouldn't have found pretty crocheted doilies or dainty flower arrangements or frilly curtains in any high-style bathroom of the period. As Belle Watling said in 1939, "It wouldn't be fittin'." So, if you want a true period look but you still want a bit of decoration, you might try adding a stenciled (or taped) border (a zigzag, or a Greek key, or a very-authentic angel-fish-&-bubbles motif in black & one other color--there are lots of possibilities) just above the tiles or just below the ceiling. Stenciled & painted designs are an authentic look, because a border is actually part of the room rather than something in the room. And, on the other hand, if you're doing a room that's not intended in any way to be authentic but one that's, rahter, ABOUT the period, you have a lot more possiblities beyond the obvious cliches. If it's photos you want, look at the striking black-&-white images that Hedrich-Blesing took for the 1933 World's Fair here in Chicago. Their lustrous shot of the Chrysler building at night has gotta be the most drop-dead glamorous photo of the whole century. I think you can buy a reproduction from the Library of Congress. Or check out Ewdard Weston's work, if you don't know it. Once you've seen his voluptuous, suggestive photgraphs of produce, you'll never look at a green pepper the same way again. For Art Deco drawings, look up Hugh Ferris' work. His renderings of Hoover Dam are awesome. For posters, look at the work of A.M. Cassandre, or Joseph Binder, whose graphic work between the wars is some of the most powerful ever. And since this approach is not really authentic for the period, anyway, there's one more image that would fit in just fine with the style & also with the black-&-white scheme you've already got going on: Richard Estes' iconic painting "Drugs" from the Art Institute of Chicago. It's a 196Os piece, but the subject is a classsic late-1930s facade in curved black Vitrolite & bent glass, and I bet the AIC has it in reproduction. I hope this suggests the two different approaches you can take as you finish your room. Be sure to post some pics when you get your room the way you want. Regards, Magnaverde.

Awesome suggestions! I've been sparked! @njmomma: I like this example. As the original buffet comes with a mirror, I don't like it. Perhaps a separate vintage mirror would be nice to reflect some light in the space. Then I can hang pictures around it. @yvonne: I have hordes of pottery and you bring up a good idea; instead of buying more art I should hang my pottery on the wall, after taking off the mirror top. We have quite a few family pictures; in our previous home the buffet was flanked by those vintage items. However as this space has less traffic than the front hallway where I was considering for the family pictures, I'll keep the pottery in this location and the family pictures in the front hallway. @holly: I'm refining my mint favorites. I'm looking at reds, oranges in abstracts and landscapes. However previous suggestions of using pottery may put Minted on the back burner. @tedbixby: yes I have considered putting the wicker chairs on either side of the buffet..To the right of the buffet is a dry sink which is normally in the living room but due to the Christmas tree we had to switch it out with a drop leaf table (which is usually to the right of the buffet under the window). @grover: the room functions as it is. There's a dog pen because we have to pen them when we're gone. We don't use a dining room table, so it doesn't need to function as that. And we have an abundance of antiques but less room than our previous house so we have to find a wall for them. I wish we could put them in storage, but these are my husband's family pieces and he's not interested in doing that. And he's not ready to reduce the inventory, so we have to work with the pieces in the square footage that we have.