If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home

by Lucy Worsley

The ground of the superiority of hand-wrought goods … is a certain margin of crudeness. The margin must never be so wide as to show bungling workmanship, since that would be evidence of low cost, nor so narrow as to suggest the ideal precision attained only by the machine, for that would be evidence of low cost.

A perfect excuse for mistakes - can't be TOO perfect, or it loses the appeal.

‘Disgust’ is a modern concept: only when food is relatively abundant can people afford to overlook certain forms of nutrition on the grounds of nastiness. In lean, mean times no one found any type of food disgusting.

I feel this can also tie into the preferred diets (vegan, gf, etc.) of today.

Washing up was always one of the very worst jobs in the kitchen. Albert Thomas, who’d done it many times himself, recalled that even a modest dinner party for ten in a wealthy household of the 1920s required no less than 324 items of silver, china and glass to be washed, in addition to the saucepans.

I don't think I'll be whining about "all those dishes" in the sink much now.