Article
How Did the World Get So Ugly?
The Cultural Tutor | Sheehan Quirke
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Oct 2025
Victorians combined useful engineering with ornament so ordinary public things looked beautiful. Today we favor cheap convenience and bland design over craft and public pride. Looking at everyday objects reveals what a society values.
9 Oct 2025
Those lampposts don't look modern to us now. They look quaint and old-fashioned. Why? Because they are decorated. And we don't associate decoration with cutting-edge technology. And that's a major difference between us and the Victorians in the 19th century. They saw no contradiction between startling modernity and time-honored tradition.