Impractical wall coverings

This is an idea I've been tinkering with for some time, but have never gotten quite right. It's inspired by one of the descriptions of an impressive piece of palace architecture, in typically overblown Barsoomian style, from The Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

The stones were carried down the walls in an irregular fringe for a few feet, where they appeared to hang like a beautiful and gorgeous drapery... In that single room was a vast treasure equal to the wealth of many a large city.

This isn't at all a literal illustration of the passage (although that might be worth trying too, at some point) but I think I've made some progress with the ridiculous-numbers-of-jewels-set-into-the-wall effect.



Maybe I need to try something with some natural symmetry. One of these days I will dig through my folders of formulas, and find one with a nice repeating tangent function or something, that will give me a series of arch shapes.