Oscar Wilde said it best: “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.” He went. That was in 1900; by 2000 the killing wallpaper had been replaced with an Aubrey Beardsley design. We’ve all seen bad wallpaper. In this exhibition at the RISD Museum, good ones are the subject at hand. More than 100 samples of salvaged French wallpapers and drawn designs, borders and fragments, all dating to the 18th and 19th centuries, show what goes into the making of these decorative works for walls. The pieces come from a collection assembled in the 1920s and 30s by Charles and Frances Wilson Huard. —Laura Jacobs