A look at British china and porcelain from the 18th and 19th centuries might suggest otherwise Since the period of the industrial revolution in the mid-17th century and in the 19th century when it took hold in society, I would contend along with quite a few other I think, that the culture has generally been in decline. But does this mean that the first is the cause or even a contributing factor to the decline?
It is assumed by many to be the case, and we do, in my opinion, see clear signs of a decline in some areas of the culture at this time (especially so in the case of liturgical art and music). But I am not convinced that mass production or industrialisation are primary causal factors. I have always felt that the underlying design is the most important factor in the beauty of objects. There is nothing inherently less mass-producable or expensive about beautiful design. Beauty and elegance in design can be as cheap as ugliness. If we had designers who understood how to create beautiful objects, then mass production allows for the creation of lots of beautiful and affordable objects. This is a good thing, isn’t it? Of course, if designers create ugliness, then mass production will churn lots of ugly objects of the production line too, without being the cause of it.
Also, just because two events, the increase in mass production and the decline in some parts of the culture coincide, it doesn’t mean that one causes the other. Correlation does automatically mean cause and in this case, the correlation doesn’t seem to me to to be as strong as one might at first suspect.
In his book the Spirit of the Liturgy Pope Benedict XVI talks of a break between the culture of faith and the wider culture. The question is which declined first and which is the most powerful influence on that decline? In my assessment, it is the liturgy that is the primary influence on the culture of faith, and without a Catholic culture of faith
If industrialisation and mass production were the primary causes, (or more generally economic and social conditions) one would expect the negative effects since the 18th century to be most pronounced when the laissez faire, liberal economics were are their most present, which is this period of the 18th and especially the 19th century. However, that is not what I see. The mundane art and music of the period is still strong in many respects and it was not even uniformly bad yet in the realm of the sacred – sacred architecture flowered in the forms pioneered by the English Catholic convert WA Pugin. The general picture seems to be one of a slow decay in the liturgical forms first, with the wider culture following later.
The period when the decline of culture really accelerated is not this period, but the one following it, the 20th century. Traditional ideas of proportion and harmony were not finally and universally rejected in architecture until after the Second World War, for example. Yet in the 20th century, economic and social conditions improved and the supposed excesses of the capitalist system were curtailed by regulation in the West.
A look at some mass produced objects of the period would help of course. Recently I was reading TS Ashton’s economic history of the period The Industrial Revolution (Oxford University Press, 1968). He remarks at one point that the Wedgwood and Spode factories were founded in the 18th century and produced china and porcelain right through this period. So here I give you pottery from the factories of Wedgwood and Spode. This are made in Staffordshire in England and the factories are situated in the Midlands, right at the heart of where the British industrial revolution took place.
You can decide for yourself. Do you think they are ugly mass produced objects? If we think they are beautiful this suggests that mass production is not inherently bad. Given the improvements in the techniques of mass production, one would expect that degree to which a product reflects faithfully the original design is even greater than it was at this time.
It is worth making the point also that Ashton discusses at length the living and working conditions of the poor during this period and compares them with the period before – the early 17th century and the 16th century. It is interesting that in his assessment things generally improved. He makes the point that although there were poor working and living conditions by today’s standards, they weren’t uniformly poor, and says that workers houses were as likely to be well made and well proportioned as not. Also he notes that people at the time were quick to respond to injustice and so laws protecting the conditions of workers were introduced from the early 19th century onwards. We should have a look at the workers cottages that were made in Britain at the time. There are plenty of Victorian terraces which are now sought after places for the well to do in the best parts of town – for example in Chelsea and Fulham. But that is another blog posting for the future.
Here is some china for you. When I was young, my parents had a period when they collected antique china and porcelain from this period and seeing the Spode particularly reminds of me china they used to possess. These works have passed the test of time for beauty that I always like to apply in trying to assess the beauty of, for example, a work of art. Has it transcended its own time? Do people today still see this a good and beautiful or is appreciation of it subject to the vagaries of fashion and so only temporary? The antique markets of the world suggest the former.
Photgraphs from top: Wedgewood designed by Lady Templeton, c1790-1800; Spode mid-19th century; Wedgewood vase, 1790; Spode vase 17th century; Spode 19th century plate.
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I very much like this essay, as it is something I’ve been thinking on for several years; please forgive me my windy response.
Back in the late 80s, I lived in England and was able to take annual pilgrimages to the Wedgwood (among other) factories with the other American Air Force wives. My wedding china (circa 1976) is the Wedgwood “lavender on cream color, shell edge” (http://images.replacements.com/images/images5/china/W/wedgwood_lavender_on_cream_color_shell_edge_dinner_plate_P0000113899S0085T2.jpg) which was discontinued about the time I lived there. While the body of the china pieces were mass produced, and had been for years and years, the decoration, an intricate dimensional grapevine, was hand-moulded and hand-applied to each individual piece. As I’ve collected this china over the years, the quality of the hand-moulding, seen in the sharpness of the sculptural quality of the design, the amount of applied decoration, and the thinness of the china body, has waned over time. In other words, the pieces and their decorations, have become thicker and heavier; there are less decorations, and the decorations have become less refined, less nuanced.
In the pieces of china you show, above, each piece has some sort of hand-applied decoration. The Wedgwood black basalt urn has the same type of hand-applied decoration my wedding china has. The other pieces are either hand-painted, and/or have hand-painted gilt accents (rims, etc). So while the china bodies are mass produced, all the decor is still hand-applied; although there was transferware made at this time, and that was a more “mass-produced” type of chinaware, it still required someone to apply the transfer to the china.
In America, Fire King was an inexpensive and popular form of kitchen glassware. It was the precursor to Pyrex ware. My late Husband’s Grandmother left me a piece she had used all her married life. The interesting thing about Fire King is that it’s pretty! It’s has a subtle blue color and moulded floral decoration around each piece (and there are lots of pieces: measuring pitchers, mixing bowls, casserole dishes, and so on). Each piece was completely mass produced; the molten glass was poured into a mould in a factory on an assembly line. It differed from china in that it wasn’t further hand decorated and practically every housewife could buy a piece at the five-and-dime.
Yet the fact that something so completely utilitarian was made with an aesthetic, was made well and was made with beauty, is my very wordy and roundabout point. A piece of Fire King, such as the small rectangular dish in which Mamaw, a farmwife, cooked goat burgers, is pretty and a pleasure to use and to show on one’s kitchen table. The things we have in our kitchen today, for the most part, are not necessarily as pretty at the same sort of price-point. Nor will we pass them down to our Great-grandchildren as I will with both my wedding china and Mamaw’s Fire King.
Indeed, mass-production, however it is defined, has not so much created ugliness, as much as something within our culture has asked for ugliness. In the case of my wedding china, because it wasn’t mass-produced enough, it became prohibitively expensive to manufacture (hand-applied decoration, by skilled workers, in England, costs a lot of money in the British equivalent of taxes, insurance, OSHA, and so forth making the china itself too expensive). In the case of Fire King, Pyrex took over as a better, safer product. As kitchens became more utilitarian, the clear glass of Pyrex and plain smooth white of Corning alluded to the “science” behind cooking, so decorations became minimal…and certainly not dimensionally moulded into the piece (unclean! food bits could get stuck there! too much work!). But I also think pretty for the sake of pretty fell by the wayside when it could be proved that pretty cost too much.
Too bad for the cook who reveled in the pretty as s/he made dinner every night…and was willing to invest the elbow grease, minimal as it is.
Great stuff, thank you
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Good observation. One could point to some immediate causes of the decline: gradual acceptance of crude simplicity as desirable or at least acceptable, and social experimentation that destroyed elite-to-masses order, but these two themselves are products of declining religious awareness. With revolutions and world wars people stopped to think that they are all that special and began surrounding themselves with junk, even as modern technology could give them marvels.
I would certainly say that the mass production does not inherently create ugliness, no more than hand making something is a guarantee of beauty. Each method can produce items of varying quality. However, there is something to be said for the uniqueness of an item. It is not the same when you see a beautiful object surrounded by ten others it just like it as when you have something that you know is unique, like nothing else. Perhaps it is merely a trick of the mind, a need for something to be “special” but it does have some effect on how we perceive these objects.
I meant to quote “The period when the decline of culture really accelerated is not this period, but the one following it, the 20th century” but stupidly used angle brackets so it did not come out.