Latest news with #Antiques
ABC News
11 hours ago
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Antiques Roadshow: S46 Episode 1 Coronation Special
Antiques Roadshow NEW SEASON Lifestyle Feel-Good Inspiring Watch Article share options Share this on Facebook Twitter Send this by Email Copy link WhatsApp Messenger Fiona Bruce and the Roadshow team visit more of Britain's most sumptuous and unusual locations, inviting the public to bring their antiques for examination and share stories of how they came to own them.
Boston Globe
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Elizabeth Pochoda, journalist who traversed the media world, dies at 83
And she worked at publications with starkly different readerships, including the progressive magazine The Nation -- from which she decamped for awhile to co-found the august literary magazine Grand Street -- Entertainment Weekly, The New York Post, and The Daily News. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Not that Dr. Pochoda had any patience with readership distinctions. 'I don't believe in different brows -- high, low, middle,' she told Chicago Reader in 1993. 'I believe if you write about things with the proper excitement, they're accessible to everybody.' Advertisement 'Betsy just had an amazingly broad vision, whether it was in the antiques world, the political world, or the arts world,' said Eleanor Gustafson, a consulting editor at Antiques, who was the magazine's executive editor during Dr. Pochoda's tenure as editor-in-chief from 2009 to 2016. To transform Antiques into something less, well, antique and more appealing to a wider audience, Dr. Pochoda asked Ted Muehling, a designer of jewelry and decorative objects, to go to the Shelburne Museum in Vermont, choose an object that resonated with him in its vast collection of Americana, and write about it. Toots Zynsky, a glass artist, undertook a similar mission at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, which has a focus on Asian, Native American, and folk art. Advertisement 'She was a brilliant editor and enormously creative,' said Dominique Browning, who brought Dr. Pochoda along when she moved from the top of the masthead at Mirabella to the top slot at House & Garden in the mid-1990s. Dr. Pochoda, who had 'a very quirky sensibility,' Browning said, commissioned Irish novelist Edna O'Brien to write about her fax machine, food expert Michael Pollan to write about picture windows, and novelist and essayist Cynthia Ozick to write about ladles. She also supported writers in the ways that perhaps mattered to them most: financially and typographically. 'She called me cold and told me she had wanted me to write for The Nation, but was embarrassed because the fees there were so low,' jazz critic and writer Gary Giddins said in an interview. But once she was at Vanity Fair, he added, 'she wanted to give me a contract.' Katrine Ames, a writer and editor who was on the House & Garden staff with Dr. Pochoda and who later wrote for her at Antiques, recalled an assignment to profile Ulysses Grant Dietz, then the chief curator at the Newark Museum. 'I told Betsy it was way over the length she'd asked for, but there was such great information, and I told her I would trim it,' Ames said in an interview. 'And she said: 'No, I'm not going to cut a word. I'm just going to put it in smaller print.'' Advertisement The youngest of three children, Elizabeth Jane Turner was born Dec. 13, 1941, in Chicago. Her father, Frederick, was a lawyer; her mother, Frances (Franklin) Turner, managed the household. After earning a bachelor of arts in English literature at Connecticut College, she earned a doctorate in medieval literature from the University of Pennsylvania in 1968. That same year, she married Philip Pochoda, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, who later became an editor and book publisher. Elizabeth Pochoda was a professor of English literature at Temple University when, in 1976, she was offered the job of literary editor for The Nation on the strength of a recommendation from Philip Roth. 'I'd written a review of his comic fantasy 'The Breast,' and we met for drinks in Philadelphia after his class at the University of Pennsylvania,' Dr. Pochoda recalled in a tribute to Roth in The Nation after his death in 2018. 'I was a fledgling academic, and I told him that I wanted out, that tenure was the worst thing that could befall me.' 'Betsy found journalism exciting,' Philip Pochoda said. 'We were both active in the antiwar movement, and Betsy was very outfacing about her beliefs and her cultural politics. The Nation was a much better fit than a life of academia.' 'She wanted to take on the big books, the books on the best-seller lists,' said Katrina vanden Heuvel, then the editor of the magazine and now its editorial director and publisher. 'She was not earnest. Betsy hated earnest. But she was tough. She was steel.' Advertisement Dr. Pochoda was as sharp and witty a writer as many of those she edited. 'Here is a curious moment in the annals of American literary fetishism,' she wrote in a 2019 column for The Nation about the auction of Roth's personal effects, taking due note of the mild interest in 'the master's Sandy Koufax baseball card and a badly chipped Pat and Dick Nixon souvenir plate.' They were, she observed, 'the leavings of a man well known for taking to heart Flaubert's advice that writers should live modestly if they want to be wild and original in their work.' Dr. Pochoda's marriage ended in divorce. In addition to her daughter, Ivy, she leaves a granddaughter and a brother, Frederick W. Turner. 'My tremendous mother passed this morning after a brief battle with A.L.S.,' Ivy Pochoda wrote in an Instagram post last Thursday. 'Because she's not around to edit this post, it's going to be filled with platitudes. She would probably ask me to revise and resubmit.' This article originally appeared in
Daily Mirror
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
BBC Antiques Roadshow guest politely nods as 'beautiful' inherited bird cage worth fortune
aN Antiques Roadshow expert was thrilled when a guest showed him a stunning bird cage that she had inherited from her husband's family - and, unbeknown to her, it was worth thousands. WARNING: This article contains spoilers from Antiques Roadshow. An Antiques Roadshow guest could only whisper "gosh" as they discovered the eye-watering worth of a birdcage passed down through the family. BBC's Antiques aficionado Lennox Cato was part of the expert crew descending upon Helmingham Hall, where a woman brought in a rather extraordinary birdcage. Cato couldn't help but express his amazement: "So we have this wonderful, almost exotic looking bird cage." Curious about its history, he probed the guest who shared: "Well it was inherited by my husband from his family who lived in Suffolk but I'm afraid he doesn't know anymore than that. "He doesn't know where they got it from, I'm sure they inherited it but I don't know who from." Cato, suspecting the cage to be a British creation dating back to 1790-1800, enthused: "The colours, well, they're just amazing. I love the idea, looking from the top and working down. "Even the little finials carved here and these baubles hanging are bone to signify it's a bird cage. "And then we have this tiny bird set within this delightful oval. The bars themselves are brass but have been treated to appear black," he explained. He even noted a coat of arms gracing the front, but the owner admitted: "I'm afraid we've never looked into who that is." Delving deeper into the piece's features, Cato showcased how it operated, pointing out an endearing "dove of peace" figure used to secure the miniature doors. He detailed further: "And then we have the little feeding drawers left and right and on the lower section, you can turn these round and we have a little tray for cleaning. "This is what we call parquetry work, little pieces of wood, nicely simulated, to form patterns. "Let me just spin it around to show everyone just how nice it is." Cato went on to explain that the antique was crafted from a blend of maple, padauk, and ebony before moving towards his conclusion. He expressed: "All the years I've been dealing, I've seen a number of bird cages but I've never seen a bird cage as interesting and as beautiful as this. "This to me, wow, it breaks all the rules. And I think if you saw this for sale, it could quite easily cost you £15,000." Despite the astonishing valuation, the guest appeared to react with muted surprise, barely whispering "gosh", before Cato happily concluded: "It's a jolly good thing."
Telegraph
01-04-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Asking a woman why she wants to work is ‘inherently sexist', tribunal rules
Asking a woman why she wants to work is sex harassment, a tribunal has ruled. Employment Judge Kate Annand said the query was based on the 'outdated idea' that men were the 'main breadwinners'. An employer would 'not even have thought' to ask a male employee the same question, she concluded. The ruling came after John Wellington, an antiques dealer, was sued for making the remark to female sales assistant Audrey Pereira. The jewellery specialist, who runs a shop in Windsor, has been ordered to pay his former employee more than £55,000 in compensation after she successfully took him to an employment tribunal. 'Degrading environment' Judge Annand said the questions were 'inherently sexist' as it made Ms Pereira feel she needed to 'justify her need and desire to work'. She said: 'The tribunal concluded that this did amount to 'unwanted conduct' in that [Ms Pereira] found the questions to be intrusive and inappropriate.' She added the tribunal found it was 'unlikely' Mr Wellington would have asked a male who was seeking a role 'why they needed to work, why they needed to earn money, or questions about their wife'. 'The questions were inappropriate because they are based on an outdated idea that men are the main breadwinners in a house. 'The tribunal found that these questions were related to sex in that they were motivated by [Ms Pereira's] sex, and [Mr Wellington] would not even have thought to ask these questions of a male who wanted to work in the Antiques store.' She added that the questions 'created a degrading environment' and 'violated her dignity'. The Reading tribunal heard that Ms Pereira, of South Asian heritage, began working at Wellington Antiques in Windsor in October 2021. The shop advertises itself as a 'a family-run antique shop'. It sells items such as furniture, dolls, coins and the 'most exquisite antique jewellery. In November, Ms Pereira met with 40-year-old Mr Wellington to discuss her bank details. During the conversation, Mr Wellington began asking her 'personal and intrusive' questions. This included questions about her faith and her husband. He stated that she could 'trust him' because he was Catholic. 'Dirt on his shoe' In December, Mr Wellington and Ms Pereira discussed what the latter described as ''skeleton terms of employment'. Ms Pereira told the tribunal she 'opened up' to him about how difficult she found finding work given her age and ethnicity. The shop owner said that 'blacks and gays have it worse', which the sales assistant felt 'invalidated' her experience. Ms Pereira had not yet been paid, and that would continue until March 2022, the hearing was told. Even after she received her first payment of £1,300 in cash, less than what she was owed, she continued to be paid 'sporadically' throughout her employment. She was also denied a £2,000 commission promised by Mr Wellington if she hit her sales targets, the tribunal heard. During a 'heated' discussion in July, Ms Pereira raised the issue of the unpaid bonus. Mr Wellington accused her of claiming other people's sales and shouted that she could leave if she did not want the job 'on his terms'. Two weeks after the meeting, Ms Pereira texted her boss to say she did her 'very best' for the shop and was treated like the 'dirt on his shoe'. In October, after she had not been paid for three months, Mr Wellington's father, who also worked in the antique shop, advised her to get a solicitor and said he had done 'all he could' to try and get her paid. When Ms Pereira raised an official grievance Mr Wellington said he was 'grossly offended' by the accusation of race discrimination. In January 2023, she was put on paid gardening leave, but by the beginning of March, she came to the conclusion she had been effectively dismissed. The tribunal concluded that Mr Wellington's questions about her motivations and family life were 'unwanted conduct'. However, on the 'blacks and gays' comment, Judge Annand said it was 'not intended' to be a negative remark. '[Ms Pereira] found [Mr Wellington's] response to be dismissive of her and devalued her experience,' she said. 'The tribunal found the phrase was ill-judged but intended to express his view that the job market is more challenging for people who are black or homosexual and was not intended to be a negative comment about people who are black or homosexual. 'The tribunal also did not find the comment was, or was intended to be, dismissive of [Ms Pereira] or her experience as someone of South Asian ethnicity.' Ms Pereira was awarded £56,022.34 in compensation for sex harassment, unpaid wages, wrongful dismissal, and two complaints of victimisation for being put on garden leave and not being reinstated. She lost her claims for unfair dismissal, race discrimination and sex discrimination.
