Thorstein Veblen, pictured left, discusses the value of hand-wrought versus mass produced products:the material of the hand-wrought spoon is some one hundred times more valuable than the baser metal, without very greatly excelling the latter in intrinsic beauty of grain or colour, and without being in any appreciable degree superior in point of mechanical serviceability; if a close inspection should show that the supposed hand-wrought spoon were in reality only a very clever imitation of hand-wrought goods, . . . the utility of the article, including the gratification which the user derives from its contemplation as an object of beauty, would immediately decline by some eighty or ninety percent, or even more.
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