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Why is simple decoration so rare in recent work?

The things around us have become plainer. In 1923, or 1823, the fashion was for intricate and richly ornamented architecture, furniture, clothes, dishware, or whatever else. In 2023, fashionable objects are plain and minimalist, if not outright utilitarian. Steve Jobs believed that every object should look as much like a featureless white sphere as possible, and the rest of us follow in his footsteps.

By the late 1800s, “Elaborate ornamentation [in American homes] was quite common, and its cost had been greatly reduced as manufacturers learned to replace skilled craftsmen with modern machines. Progress has continued, and with modern tooling and containerized freight, we now have the technology to make similar streetlights with even better methods and larger economies of scale. When I go to pick it up, literally more than half the time the seller tells me without prompting how glad she is that someone is taking this, she was about to throw it out because nobody wants it, which would be a big shame because it belonged to her recently-deceased mother or something.

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