Wallpaper

Your choices in San Francisco hotels are overwhelming. The prices can be too. So during our staff visit to the City by the Bay, we looked for reasonably priced hotels that had charm, location or both. We came back with 14 ideas on places to bed down. It's not a complete list, but it is eclectic, like the city itself. Mystic Hotel. This property, which opened in April, stands on a tunnel-adjacent block of Stockton Street that you'll never see on a picture postcard, yet it has style, as do the Burritt Tavern bar and restaurant downstairs.

Basketball forums across the Web are constantly filled with a question that can never be answered: Who is the best basketball player of all time? Looks as though fans aren't the only ones wondering. The wallpaper on Lebron James' cellphone apparently is a digitally created photo of himself standing in triple-threat position as Michael Jordan, in his prime, guards him. "Jordan was my superhero growing up," James told Sports Illustrated. "He was the guy I feel helped me get to where I am today.

When we first reported on the Fuoco wallpaper back in 2010, we noted that the design by the New York firm Trove essentially wrapped a room in history, a frozen-in-time moment inside Teatro La Fenice of Venice, Italy. Destroyed by fire in 1836, the opera house -- pictured here after the reconstruction -- burned to the ground again in 1996. The visual drama of the space, however, lives on a bit longer thanks to Anthropologie. The store has announced that its website will sell Trove's design as pre-pasted wallpaper "for easy consumer application.

When we first reported on the Fuoco wallpaper back in 2010, we noted that the design by the New York firm Trove essentially wrapped a room in history, a frozen-in-time moment inside Teatro La Fenice of Venice, Italy. Destroyed by fire in 1836, the opera house -- pictured here after the reconstruction -- burned to the ground again in 1996. The visual drama of the space, however, lives on a bit longer thanks to Anthropologie. The store has announced that its website will sell Trove's design as pre-pasted wallpaper "for easy consumer application.

Dutch designer Inke Heiland may be best known for playful animal-silhouette wall decor for kids, but her new line of whimsical pendant lamps will charm more than a few parents.   The new Inke pendant lights are made from the same floral vintage wallpapers as the popular assemble-it-yourself animal and tree silhouettes. The lamps are about $115 and come ready to install, complete with fitting, ceiling cap and a woven electrical cord in several color combinations. Because they are made from vintage wallpaper, they are limited editions with irregularities that add to their charm.

Basketball forums across the Web are constantly filled with a question that can never be answered: Who is the best basketball player of all time? Looks as though fans aren't the only ones wondering. The wallpaper on Lebron James' cellphone apparently is a digitally created photo of himself standing in triple-threat position as Michael Jordan, in his prime, guards him. "Jordan was my superhero growing up," James told Sports Illustrated. "He was the guy I feel helped me get to where I am today.

THE information in "Kew Palace Reopening to Public" [News, Tips, Bargains, April 23] piqued my curiosity. Reading that Mad King George was confined to the palace and was later determined to suffer from the central nervous disorder porphyria was quite interesting. When it was further stated that the Kew has now been restored and preserved with bright green wallpaper, it brought to mind a fact that I had read. By the 18th century, green wallpaper was no longer recommended for dining rooms because arsenic was used in the pigment.

People still hang their own wallpaper, but it takes a bit of courage--and a lot of caution--to do a good job with today's heavier, more expensive vinyl papers. Kim Farthing of Farthing Interiors in Newport Beach suggests hiring a professional to hang high-quality paper. But, she advises, make sure the firm is licensed and has liability insurance--and check references.

When John T. Hall goes to work each morning, he eagerly confronts something most of us would just as soon pass by--walls in need of wallpaper, and sometimes wallpaper that needs to be stripped. Hall is a professional paperhanger, an artist whose canvas is a bare wall on which he carefully creates the special looks his customers crave. From Hall's perspective, of course, most people would be better off turning to a professional if papering is part of their decorating plan. The Laguna Niguel resident has been hanging paper since 1973 and has learned a few tricks in the ensuing 16 years.

America, get ready to unroll. Led by a number of old British design houses such as Farrow & Ball, which last year opened a retail store on Melrose Avenue, wallpaper is staging a comeback. It's no longer just paper printed with English roses, either. Thanks to 21st century ingenuity, the array of wall coverings is dizzying: hand-painted fabrics, paper-backed woven fibers known as grass cloth and scrub brush-proof vinyl that simulates quilted leather.

Dutch designer Inke Heiland may be best known for playful animal-silhouette wall decor for kids, but her new line of whimsical pendant lamps will charm more than a few parents.   The new Inke pendant lights are made from the same floral vintage wallpapers as the popular assemble-it-yourself animal and tree silhouettes. The lamps are about $115 and come ready to install, complete with fitting, ceiling cap and a woven electrical cord in several color combinations. Because they are made from vintage wallpaper, they are limited editions with irregularities that add to their charm.

Few set designers begin production with the intention of creating a deliberately gaudy and tacky stage. However, Thomas Buderwitz, scenic designer for South Coast Repertory's "The Prince of Atlantis," sought to do just that — to "push the boundaries of good taste. " The just-opened play by Steven Drukman follows Joey Colletti (John Kapelos), one of Boston's biggest seafood importers, as he lands himself in a minimum-security prison after getting into trouble with his company.

For some, staring at wallpaper is as much fun as watching paint dry, but not for designer Tony Roche, who created a handmade silver leaf wallpaper on display in the 1960s-set mutant superhero saga "X-Men: First Class. " "I have to say, sometimes when you mention to people wallpaper, they glaze over slightly," he said. "It's a bit like saying you're interested in spotting trains. But it surprises me how beautiful wallpaper is, when a lot of people think of it as being rather domestic and boring.

Alix Soubiran could live quite happily without a stick of furniture. "A chair can be wonderful, but walls are what you see all the time," she says. "To me, walls that create a story or a mood are the starting point. " As a muralist, Soubiran is accustomed to using walls as a blank canvas. But she recently began experimenting with decorating techniques, creating a line of high-end wallpapers called Princes & Crows. Inspired by her memories of her native France, those designs have helped to transform a ramshackle 1923 duplex in Los Feliz into the charming home she shares with husband Joe Mauceri, a film and TV director and writer, and their 61/2-month-old daughter, Monica Moonshine.

Talk about thorough. When now semi-retired Chicago-area agent Hank Roeters was showing a house some years back to potential home buyers, the couple climbed into the bathtub together to make sure it fit two. Most would-be home buyers aren't nearly as detailed, even in today's buyer's market when they have plenty of time to make informed decisions. In fact, real estate agents think buyers are not exhaustive enough. According to realty agents, folks tend to pay far too much mind to the wallpaper, paint colors, carpet, greasy appliances and even the seller's furniture, and not nearly enough attention to water stains in the basement, corroded electric boxes, windows that refuse to open, rotted floor joists and cracks in the foundation.

At the Parlour Room, the new bar from the Hollywood night-life royal Craig Trager, a guest is first and foremost overwhelmed by the wallpaper. Ordinarily, this wouldn't bode well for a bar — what with all the pretty girls, strapping lads and pillars of booze that should be claiming your attention instead. But, my, this wallpaper. If Marie Antoinette (the Kirsten Dunst version) were to dictate a new Versailles inside the Polo Lounge, she would cover the place in this stuff.

Alix Soubiran could live quite happily without a stick of furniture. "A chair can be wonderful, but walls are what you see all the time," she says. "To me, walls that create a story or a mood are the starting point. " As a muralist, Soubiran is accustomed to using walls as a blank canvas. But she recently began experimenting with decorating techniques, creating a line of high-end wallpapers called Princes & Crows. Inspired by her memories of her native France, those designs have helped to transform a ramshackle 1923 duplex in Los Feliz into the charming home she shares with husband Joe Mauceri, a film and TV director and writer, and their 61/2-month-old daughter, Monica Moonshine.

At the Parlour Room, the new bar from the Hollywood night-life royal Craig Trager, a guest is first and foremost overwhelmed by the wallpaper. Ordinarily, this wouldn't bode well for a bar — what with all the pretty girls, strapping lads and pillars of booze that should be claiming your attention instead. But, my, this wallpaper. If Marie Antoinette (the Kirsten Dunst version) were to dictate a new Versailles inside the Polo Lounge, she would cover the place in this stuff.

After spending 20 years of decorating huge multimillion-dollar homes, interior designer Ann Fraser decided it was time to apply her design expertise to her own home. She tore down a 1950s single-level home in the Newport Heights area of Newport Beach and in its place built a two-story that looks like a centuries-old plantation-style estate. Features that give it an aged look are numerous. Iron railings enclose an expansive balcony where Mexican pavers were installed upside down to make them look older.

Arguably, watercolor was the most important medium sustained by American painters struggling with the new demands and untried possibilities of Modernism in the first half of the 20th century. Georgia O'Keeffe, John Marin, Charles Sheeler, Marsden Hartley, Max Weber, Charles Demuth -- whatever artistic achievements they and many others certainly had are unthinkable without their work in pigments suspended in water and laid down on paper. And for some of them, watercolors represented the pinnacle of their accomplishments.