The Veneer of Age

In 1992 the British Broadcasting Company produced a television series that presented Signs of the Times – A Portrait of the Nation’s Tastes, which asked members of the public to volunteer information about aspects of their taste in the home. ¹ Attitudes to ‘old things’ were divided into two camps: those that wanted only new things (‘I’m put off real antiques because to me they look old and sort of spooky’); and those that did not (‘By and large I would always prefer to go to antique shops and markets rather than to department stores’). When did this dichotomy begin? Can it be traced back to the eighteenth century, a period of fundamental change in manufacture and consumption that heralded the birth of ‘modern Britain’?