grow naturally from within" as Gustav Stickley put it in an issue of his Craftsman magazine A final quality of stencils, and one that made them attractive to the average Arts & Crafts homeowner, was that successful results could be achieved by just about anyone In fact, many paint companies sold stencil kits expressly for use by the homeowner  This meant that a person could take an active hand in the decoration of his or her own home, and while there certainly were professional stencilers back then (as now), it was not something that required the services of a specialist
The same could not be said, however, for decorative painted murals This was a category of endeavor best left to professional artists and muralists, and indeed a whole industry grew up around the turn of the century to support and service the design and creation of murals Perhaps no group of designers made greater use of architectural murals than the Prairie School architects like George Washington Maher or Frank Lloyd Wright, and the muralist most closely associated with these architects was Milwaukee-born painter George Mann Niedecken After studying painting in Milwaukee and Germany, Niedecken came to the Art Institute of Chicago to study the nascent discipline of "architectural painting" with Louis Millet, a partner in the Chicago firm of Healy & Millet, the company responsible for executing the decorative schemes for most of Sullivan’s large-scale commercial projects of the time Niedecken’s first major commission appears to have been the decorative mural for the Sedgwick Brinsmaid house in Des Moines, Iowa, designed by Prairie School architect Arthur Huen in 1902, (now demolished) The mural depicted a vast mid-western forest in muted tones of brown and green, and was installed above the wainscoting in the dining room of the house In December of the same year, 1902, Niedecken exhibited at toe Crucago Architectural Club’s annual show, and it was here that Wright first came into contact with him The following year, 1903, Wright commissioned Niedecken to execute a strikingly similar mural for the

dining room of the Susan Lawrence Dana house in Springfield, Illinois, and the relationship between Wright and Niedecken, and indeed among most of the other major Prairie School architects, was firmly established Over the ensuing 15 years, Niedecken would be responsible for murals in Wright’s Coonley, Bogk, Meyer May, Amberg, Irving, Robie and Allen houses, as well as countless other projects of other Prairie School architects and their clients In fact, in 1909, Niedecken was commissioned to design a large suite of furniture for the Brinsmaid house, which was again exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago before installation
Unlike either wallpapers or stencils, murals could depict a single, non-repeating scene, painted either directly onto the wall surface or onto canvas, which was then attached to the wall, as in the Brinsmaid mural Color and subject matter was generally developed to complement the existing decorations of the interior, and often scenes of the surrounding landscape or plantings were incorporated into the design Because murals required at least the talents of a skilled painter if not professional muralist, Arts & Crafts murals were relatively rare As tastes and styles changed, what few there were often got painted over or removed and destroyed In many cases, the only records that exists today of these stunning decorations are period photographs, preliminary sketches, or fragments of the mural itself.
It is interesting to realize that murals and mural painting became a large part of the government’s WPA assistance program during the Depression, and moved from being a primarily domestic art form into the public arena Indeed, hundreds of schools, libraries, post offices and other governmental buildings of the 1930’s and 1940’s contain large-scale architectural murals With today’s resurgent interest in all things Arts & Crafts, wallpapers, stencils and even period-inspired murals are once again gaining in popularity, providing the same notes of color, ornament and subtle decoration that they once did in the past.