You may also want to read Tolstoy's What Is Art?

How odd.

CNN just published an excerpt of British design critic Stephen Bayley's book, "Taste: The Secret Meaning if Things" which was originally published 25 years ago.

I could barely get through that drivel. Which, just saying so means I have no manners. By having no manners it appears I have no taste. Okay! At least I don't bore people to death.

I am with you justerrilynn, I didn't make it past the first paragraph..tried to skim but even that was a snooze. "Good Taste" seems like the tension between old money families and the new rich. I do think style is something learned by growing up in well appointed rooms. These rooms were most likely styled by someone paid to make them FABULOUS. I am ok with not being in THAT crowd. Perhaps there are levels of design. We see some pretty fabulous rooms and decor here and we see some pretty lower middle class rooms. All can be beautiful in their time and place. It is like that defunct HGTV show where the designer creates a room with very expensive decor then duplicates it with more reasonable priced items. The QUALITY of expensive furnishings can be FELT when one walks into a room. The richness of the items just puts off its own vibe, but that isn't to say the more affordable space isn't a knock out!!!

Some people have innate good taste, but for others it's something that does need to be cultivated, especially in the past 50 years or so with mass marketing, mass media, and the trend toward homogenization (the Pottery Barn/HGTV/Pinterest effect). I'm often reminded of quotes by two of my favorite designers, Albert Hadley and Peter Dunham, which seem appropriate here.

Albert Hadley: "Obviously, you can’t have much of an opinion if you don’t know anything about what you are talking about. You have to have some education or some exposure. I am always interested in young people who have some kind of knowledgeable background about the business and about the people who have been involved in it over the years. … When I was growing up, I was educated mainly from magazines because in those days that’s where you could get at it. All of the magazines were so fabulous because they showed how the best of the best people lived — the ladies and gentlemen of style and taste, and what their houses looked like. The articles were wonderful and many of the magazines in the thirties had marvellous illustrations by the artist of the day."

Peter Dunham: "I see a lot of people in the States, who basically want to live in a hotel or have the look of a hotel. I think this comes because, and this is a really snobbish thing to say, the American experience is much more limited. I mean compared to England, where there is always kind of a fancy house in the country near where you grew up, even if you grew up in a little village. In Europe, at one point or another, you are exposed to these palettes and you see the pinnacle of the amazing beautiful chateaus in France or the great country houses in England. Whereas I grew up thinking my inspiration is Lord and Lady something-or-other, who had an incredible house with incredible colors and beautiful paintings and furniture and it was all mixed together, and it was kind of roses and 17th-century Chinese porcelain. A lot of people here want what they last saw at the Four Seasons Hotel."

I fear for your grandchildren too, anglophelia, clearly, their grandmother is so caught up in romanticizing the past (through the lens of privilege, I might add) she can't even envision a good future for them. Talk about being the epitome of poor taste, yikes.

"You may also want to read Tolstoy's What Is Art?"

it helped me to shape the intitial thought I had on the matter which was: almost nothing is really a taboo but it's incredibly hard to write or speak about it in a way that will feel right-and I don't know or can't explain properly what is "right", just that "right" doesn't happen often, because many will lack something that Tolstoy mentions as a neccessity for an art of becoming, well, art. It will sound banal, or offensive, or convoluted, or something else will be lost; and even with talented and acomplished writers, in my mind there are very few who can write well about sex for example-and these who can are usually world famous. Money is easier I guess; taste is even easier to discuss. But "easier" doesn't mean "not difficult".

And writing is still easier than talking, to a degree; since one can afford to wait while writing, seeking for the best way to tell things so they'll approach this intangible "right" that he feels they should be. In talking, you don't always have time-so you say something ,and immediately feels wrong because the distance between what you were striving to tell and what you said is so big it's frustrating, it's like you lied-only you didn't lie, you didn't find the right words if they existed at all, and now the ones you found are gone and take their own shape and live their own life, and nothing much you can do about it.

So back to the article-this article, it doesn't do the greatest job of writing on the subject either. In my opinion. But neither do I, I suppose.

(I guess that's why I prefer to write, and on forums where one's responsibility exists but is perceived as less grave lol, and not to talk much irl, and not to publish articles)

"in criticizing someone else's taste, one is simultaneously criticizing oneself".

<Sometime[s], of course, the merely decorative is exactly what's needed.>

These are my favorite quotes from the article, but otherwise I did not get much out of it. I referenced Tolstoy before because I like his approach toward aesthetics, although I do not agree with his final conclusions.

I agree with April that speaking is very different from writing, but I do a lot of both. When I write in my diaries (which I seldom do anymore, although I used to quite frequently when I was much younger), I think that I write the way that I speak; i.e., without much thought or overthinking. As a result, when I read what I wrote in my diaries, I have the same reaction that I have when I see videos of myself talking spontaneously. That reaction is "I can't believe I wrote/said that!" I try to be thoughtful when writing posts in forums, but sometimes I become spontaneous and have to edit afterwards, if there is time.

I have received much more criticism for my own tastes and choices than I have ever given towards others. I try to be tolerant of other people's choices in taste, but I will offer my opinion if asked. In my art and design classes, we often had to offer critiques of other people's work, and this continues in my work today. My boss is very intolerant of taste that is different from hers.

Maybe it's a function of it being 1 a.m., but maybe not. My eyes glaze over, reading the article.