Not just a fence: The story of a stainless steel status symbol
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
This also reminds me of how after WW2 we seem to have forgotten how to make things look nice. Older architecture often had ornate detailing. Even traditional houses and clothing had details to accentuate its visual appeal. But look at houses rising up in cities lately and they look like giant Ikea filing cabinets. I appreciate the detailing on these fences.
It might be due more to inexperience or an isolated incident being a higher percentage of your experiences due to less overall usage.
Also, stainless steel chopsticks are needle like at the ends and have very little surface for friction to pick things up, so they're kind of dainty in that respect --I struggle to pick up a good bite.
https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=...
That'd be all, but I found something interesting when trying to look up what threshold of roughness is too coarse for trapping bacteria. Didn't end up finding that; the interesting fact is that despite bacteria growth increasing in most surfaces when deviating from a smooth polish, stainless steel actually exhibits less bacterial growth when roughened very finely, on the order of tens of nanometres of Ra (mean absolute deviation of height of a cross section from the mean line, though it seems the fractal nature of roughness means the order of magnitude of measurement depends on the measurement method). That's according to [1][2] and their citations; one of them gives an explanation of the cell membrane being limited by bend radius, so that when roughening a surface at a sufficiently small scale, the contact area bacteria can make decreases rather than increases.
No idea about the implications of nanoscale surface finishing on gripping food, though.
[1] Ctrl+F "surface roughness" https://doi.org/10.3389/fbioe.2021.643722
[2] https://doi.org/10.1021/acsbiomaterials.7b00544
*nerdsnipe: By what factor of cut angle, pitch, and angle between passes does knurling increase surface area, if knurling is modelled as an extrude-cut along a line of a triangle wave profile into a face of the raw material, followed by a second pass of another at an angle to the first line, and completed by rolling the resulting face into a cylinder? The simple case of a 90 degree cut to full depth in only one direction increases profile length (and thus surface area) by sqrt(2), but does a second cut make something elegant like a tidy factor of 2?
It's a matter of labor cost. Those ornate details look nice, but they're expensive to create, and expensive to maintain. When those details were popular, there existed a surfeit of skilled manual labor. Over time more complex aspects of construction shifted to or were replaced by pre-fabricated components, and manual labor became increasingly less skilled, or perhaps a better way of putting it is more specialized to working with pre-fabricated components.
Ask someone who owns one of those old San Francisco Victorians--at least those which maintain the original aesthetic--how much a simple paint job costs. It'll quickly become obvious why so many were plastered over, covered in asbestos tiles, etc. Ditto for internal renovations--few people end of replacing waintscoting or other detailing, and those that do try to preserve some of that detail typically end up using faux, pre-fabricated components that lack much of the depth and richness. Labor costs are just too expensive to spend on those sorts of purchases, even for multi-millionaires.
And those costs only continue to increase as knowledge and experience disappear. In the 21st century, most of that skill is pretty much gone forever. You can find people who know how to do these things at a technical level, but few to none that can bang them out as efficiently as people 100+ years ago who did it daily. The whole labor and supply chain ecosystem is simply incomparable.
I sure wonder if serf hovels had those ornate details. Something tells me it mostly showed up on a small fraction of structures.
However, the biggest issue today is not a lack of ornamentation. Rather, it is a lack of thought. So many homes are now made without proportion, balance or scale. For instance, pull up a picture of a Victorian and, in your mind, strip away the ornamentation. You'll find that things just feel right, such as the size and distribution of windows, the height of each floor, the roofs, etc. So much of that is missing today, but it would be an insignificant cost to address (before a building is built).
I think of it similar to food. There are some amazing things you can only experience at extremely expensive restaurants. But you can also find amazing food for a couple dollars. It comes down to similar things such as balance. Very simple food that is prepared the correct way and balanced can be both cheap and absolutely delicious. But too many people don't care, so you rarely see it.
Yes. The lower class used to be much poorer than it is today, and the middle class much richer. Remember, through the late 19th century, most upper middle class families could afford to have a live-in maid.
It's a small local woodshop/blacksmith/potter/logger/apothecary/farm/Victorian village that specializes in yesteryear craftsmanship and woodworking. They make their own coal for the smithy, create their own wrought-iron tools, and also do woodworking with a lot of treadle-powered antique machinery. They're one of the few specialist places that can still professional restore Victorian and other old architecture. It's totally a labor of love, in addition to being a tourist attraction and continuation school for kids interested in manual crafting.
Reminds me a lot of the communities that try to restore abandonware via emulators and such... that rare combination of nostalgia, technical excellence, and thorough professionalism. It's so rare to find that in today's throwaway culture.
Metal is probably a little more durable, but wooden chopsticks are plenty durable as well as hygienic and look great. Wooden chopsticks are also easier to use and don't transfer heat.
Calling metal chopsticks more practical is highly dubious given everywhere uses wooden chopsticks and basically only Korea uses metal chopsticks. Moreover, even in Korea wooden and bamboo chopsticks are also used.
edit I'm curious to know why I am being downvoted as I thought the antibacterial properties of wood vs. plastic for eg. cutting boards were a well known thing.
Here is a paper about it:
My point was simply that wood also has antibacterial properties, like steel, and probably shouldn't be considered less hygienic.
We did not "forget". Take a look at what wins architecture awards [1] (or what they build when budget isn't strict) - "nice" is actively thwarted. The exact same happened in art, where one cannot hide behind "cost".
Eh, they are much harder to use than bamboo or wooden chopsticks: stainless steel has a lot less grip, because it has less friction.
(If you are good enough at using chopsticks, it doesn't matter too much.)
Chopsticks may be more traditional, but they really aren't the most usable for a lot of food types.
There's a lot to be said for metal doors.
Even at the low end. HUD housing projects used to have concrete walls, steel doors, and good deadbolts. This made break-ins really hard. There are videos of cops trying to break down one of those with a battering ram, and giving up, exhausted.
If you see a rusted steel edge to someone’s lawn you can bet your host knows the name of every plant and your cup of tea is probably coming with a saucer.
https://www.harrodhorticultural.com/harrod-steel-edging-pid9...
That said, I do miss the style of house in the town I grew up in, where front doors often had stained glass, and verandahs some extra wrought iron flourishes.
I wish I could name the style, but here's a (poor) photo demonstrating the wrought iron flourishes at least.
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/lyttelton-nz-feb-25...
If you must use stainless steel, it has to be nice simple lines coupled with cement slab or granite and no tubes.
I think this very much depends on where you are, how recently said person acquired their wealth and how. Miami wealthy are very different from Omaha.
Singapore is absurdly rich by global standards. Dishwashers are rare: it's a combination of eating out being really popular and perhasp many people having maids.
Thus basically the only (domestic) dishwashers in the country are high end contraptions mostly acquired by expats.