Plastic's victory over craftsmanship eroded aesthetic standards

Plastic's victory over craftsmanship eroded aesthetic standards

A table lighter with twenty turned parts to strike a match. A brass handle from 1870 for pulling a bell. A 19th-century mail-order catalog where a middle-class family chose their sewing machine like one chooses an appliance today. The thesis running through this discussion is uncomfortable and hard to refute: even the humblest object from a century ago carried more hours of artisan work than the luxury item sold in a five-star hotel today.

The question opening the issue is not nostalgic. It is economic. When did design stop competing on beauty and durability and start competing on cost and obsolescence?

From the 19th-century desk to particleboard furniture

The starting point is concrete: the pen, the inkwell, the lamp, the cabinetry of the desk. All of that, even in the shabbiest office of a junior ministry, had behind it skilled artisans whose work is unmatched today, even in luxury hotel lobbies. The comparison extends to any category: pencils, footwear, dresses, lamps. Production was in the hands of workers at a level that would be unattainable for most factories today.

Some nuance that much building ornamentation was removed for maintenance convenience, and that a glass skyscraper with lights on at dusk has its own elegance. The nuance is reasonable. But it does not answer the core objection: the everyday object, the one used by normal people, was more beautiful and lasted longer.

The sewing machine, the shotgun, and the catalog

The sewing machine was one of the major acquisitions for any family. The woman of the house repaired clothes and sewed new garments. It was not an item for the rich: the wealthy bought designer clothing and changed it with fashion. The catalog also sold pistols, rifles, and shotguns, a mandatory purchase for any self-respecting gentleman. And there were bell pulls from 1870, cataloged as "level bell pull," so that ringing the bell at home was done with style.

The argument rests on a consumption observation: previously, a family saved all year for catalog purchases, and that product had to last a lifetime, to the point of being inherited. Today it is thrown away when it stops working, when it bores us, or when a new model comes out. There was less consumption and possibly more poverty, but objects were more beautiful.

Polyester and the clothing nobody wanted

One of humanity's biggest disappointments came with the invention of polyester. The synthetic fabric was cheap, lightweight, waterproof, did not shrink in washes, allowed all colors, and needed no ironing. For a time, attempts were made to use it in clothing. Users threw it in the trash and returned to normal: wool, cotton, linen, even blends with minor synthetic proportions. Great for tents, not for wearing.

The same logic applies to sheets. People bought percale fabric with a minimum of 400 threads and had them embroidered. Today we sleep on fuzzy fabrics that are pure plastic. Those who keep sheets inherited from that era describe them as a luxury both in summer and winter.

When did industrial production abandon design?

It was not the machine, it was the criterion. Industrial production already existed in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and products continued to be designed with a certain level of artistry. Some companies maintained that effort well into the 20th century. An Olivetti desktop calculator, for example, makes the attempt. Among its typewriters were jewels. The argument is not that the factory kills beauty, but that at some point payment for it ceased.

Against this appears the materialist objection: a simple worker or a poor person did not have a bronze door knob with filigree. That is true. But second-hand furniture found today in donation shops is damaged, full of chips. The comparison is not between the palace of 1890 and the apartment of 2020, but between the ordinary desk of 1890 and the ordinary desk of 2020.

Ugliness as a politics of sadness

There is a current that goes beyond aesthetics and argues that ugliness is deliberately promoted because it predisposes to sadness and depression. It is a hypothesis, not a proven fact, but it connects with a widespread intuition: the loss of beauty is a symptom of decline. People's taste, it is argued, is elsewhere today.

The strongest objection to all this nostalgia is that not everything was beautiful in antiquity either, and comparisons are always made with the best that survived. That is true. Survivorship bias exists. What it does not explain is why what is manufactured today to last is also not designed to please.

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The disorienting data is not in the objects, but in the catalog. An ordinary family 150 years ago chose among several sewing machines, several shotguns, and several bell pulls. Today, with access to millions of products, the choice reduces to which plastic lasts a bit longer before breaking.