100 years ago is harder for me to comment on, but in truth, furniture quality has continually declined. We moved from solid wood to veneered wood dust because

100 years ago is harder for me to comment on, but in truth, furniture quality has continually declined. We moved from solid wood to veneered wood dust because it’s easier to manufacture - abstracted trees are perfectly homogeneous vs the real ones. That comes at the cost of being un-repairable. A scratch in solid wood is character (according to Nakashima) while a scratch through veneer breaks the illusion. A water stained veneer (as from a coffee cup) wrecks the entire piece by swelling and popping up the veneer. Even if a piece can be repaired, it’s typically more cost effective to replace. More or less all non-designer (herman miller/knoll) non-craft furniture has been outsourced to IKEA and China which both trade price for quality. The entire American industry was killed, and with it, we lost high quality mid-range furniture. Another way to look at this is that the sq ft per person has increased 50% in the US over the last 50 years. We choose to live in large, shit quality houses and in turn, fill them with loads of shit quality furniture.