I love old china. Everyone can donate their unwanted sets to me :D I'm clumsy, so I go through it more quickly than most people. I like mixing different sets. Maybe I'm the local hipster.
A friend of mine gave me a complete set from the 1930s (a small set, just plates and bowls) and that's probably the best gift I've ever had. I'm trough all of my inherited china already, so now I rely on gifts and the thrift store.
Yep. I died a little when Mr Money Moustache melted the old silver. Some things are worth more than money. I love how the older generations built beauty into their everyday lives. Old silver with filigree patterns, the brickwork on victorian houses, we lose a bit of ourselves when everything is valued in monetary terms.
I gotta disagree - mostly on the idea that older generations built beauty into their everyday lives [more than current generations], but also philosophically about whether it’s ‘bad’ to not value old items more than their monetary value.
I’ve seen nothing to indicate that older generations valued beauty more. What we’re seeing is almost certainly survivorship bais - what wasn’t utilitarian junk to begin with tends to survive, and most of it comes from people who were extremely wealthy for their time. The whole idea of gifting china for weddings was to emulate the very rich people, but only for very special meals. That’s why it lived in protected boxes and was used only a few dozen times throughout their lifetime. Overwhelmingly the homes people lived in were as simply as constructed as could be.
People today care a heck of a lot more of how an item looks because we can afford to. Heck, there are countless reviews online and ‘unboxing videos’ which highlight just how pretty the throw-away box is for the latest trinket.
Should we value some stuff more than the cost? Meh.... it depends on how you phrase the argument. Certainly scarcity (or percieved scarcity) drives costs up, and marketers have used the concepts of ‘rare’ and ‘limited’ to their success (e.g. ‘limited time offer!’ Or ‘a rare opportunity’). We’ve hunted birds to extinction and destroyed communities because they had something others considered ‘pretty’ - but had little intrinsic cost (examples: the great auk, big game, marble quarries, gems).
OTOH I do subscribe to the view that we ought to treasure what we have, make our homes nice places to live and not buy disposable crap. So in that sense I agree...
Just some early morning ramblings.